Like his parents before him, Richard Olken, a South End resident, truly believes in the importance of travel.

“We all need to learn more,” he said recently from he and his wife Vicki’s Washington Street condo. “We all need to make the world a better place by knowing more about other people.”

Not only were Olken’s parents, Ben and Roselyn Olken, world travelers, they were also close friends of Monroe and Isabel Smith, the couple who founded the first American Youth Hostel, the predecessor to Hostelling International USA, in Northampton, Mass., in 1934.

It’s fitting then that Olken himself recently joined Hostelling International New England’s Board of Directors and that Olken and his extended family, 35 in all, decided to raise money to name the new Boston hostel’s library after Ben and Roselyn Olken.

After all, more than 30 years ago, Ben Olken had the living room at the old hostel, at 12 Hemenway St., named after Roselyn.

“An idea came to me that it’d be nice to continue my parents’ name,” Olken said.

In addition to raising funds for the library, the 66-year-old Olken, now retired from his job as general manager of Harvard Student Agencies, serves as co-chair of the capital campaign for the entire $42 million project at 19 Stuart St. The new hostel, expected to open May 11, will have 468 beds, at least 200 more than the old one.

It’ll also revitalize the area and spark a mass exchange of ideas, according to Olken.

“You’ll get people coming here from Europe, from Asia, from Africa,” he said, “and they’ll bring ideas that enrich us, and, hopefully, we’ll enrich their lives as well.”

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The same year the Smiths opened their first hostel, Olken’s father, who helped them get established in New England, started his own endeavor, the Bicycle Exchange, the well-known Harvard Square bike shop, which remained open for more than 50 years, until 1991.

Olken, a Cambridge native who has lived in the South End for eight years, grew up cycling and has biked, and ridden motorcycles, throughout New England.

In his professional life, he also founded Bikes Belong, a national bicycling advocacy organization, and served as the bicycling industry’s congressional lobbyist for America Bikes and BikesPAC.