Hostels

Hostels are the one kind of accommodation where the cheap headline and the right choice line up least often. A dorm bed is priced per person, so the arithmetic that makes it obvious for one traveller quietly reverses for two. And because you are buying a bed in a shared room rather than a room of your own, the things that decide whether the night is any good — how many people are in it, what is behind the wall, whether there is somewhere to lock a passport — are details the price never shows.

The word also covers more ground than people expect. In the same search you will find:

• Association hostels — the Hostelling International network and its national members (Jugendherberge, auberge de jeunesse, albergue juvenil). Institutional, reliable, often in buildings a commercial operator could never afford, sometimes with rules to match.
• Commercial hostels — the modern chains and independents. Better designed, more central, and where the range between excellent and unbearable is widest.
• Guesthouses that list as hostels — mostly private rooms, a couple of dorms, no common room to speak of. Quiet, and not what someone booking a hostel for the company is after.

All three come back from the same search. Telling them apart before you book is most of the skill.

The arithmetic that decides it, and where it flips

A dorm bed is sold per person per night. A private room — in a hostel or a small hotel — is sold per room. So the cost of a hostel scales with the number of people travelling and the cost of a room does not. One traveller in a dorm is almost always the cheapest bed in the city. Two travellers are often better off in a private room, and by three the dorm has usually lost.

The flip point moves with the city, and it moves a long way. Where hostels are scarce and hotels are plentiful, a dorm bed is priced as a novelty and the comparison fails at two people. Where the backpacker trade is established enough to make hostels compete with each other, it can hold to three or four. That is why the city pages on this site carry the number of hostels and what share of the local beds they are: a city with a real hostel market prices differently from one with three of them.

Before comparing, add the things sold separately. Breakfast is rarely included and is usually worse value than the bakery on the corner. Towels are often a charge. City or tourist tax is levied per person per night and is normally collected at check-in rather than shown in the online total — on a cheap bed it is a larger share of the bill than it ever is at a hotel.

Dorm size is the one number worth reading twice

Dorm sizes usually run from four beds to twenty or more, and the difference between the ends of that range is not a matter of degree. A four- or six-bed room is a shared room. An eighteen-bed room is a small public space you happen to sleep in: someone is always arriving, leaving, packing a rustling bag or coming back at four. The saving between the two is real but small; the difference in whether you sleep is not.

Check three things with it. Whether the dorm is mixed or single-sex — female-only dorms are standard, male-only less so, and a mixed dorm is the default you get if you do not choose. Whether the beds are bunks or pods; a pod with its own curtain, light and socket is a materially different product and is worth paying for. And whether there is a locker big enough for a full pack rather than a laptop, because that decides whether you can leave the building without carrying everything you own.

Bring your own padlock. Most hostels provide the locker and not the lock, and the ones sold at reception are always the worst value in the building.

What the reviews are actually telling you

Hostel guest scores behave differently from hotel ones. People rate a hostel on its staff, its common room and how easy it was to meet someone; they rate a hotel on the room. That is why a hostel can score higher than the four-star down the road while objectively offering less, and it is why a high score alone tells you very little about whether you will sleep.

Read for the specifics instead, and weight recent reviews heavily — hostels change hands and change character faster than hotels do. Four things are worth hunting for by name: noise after midnight, the state of the bathrooms late in the day, how far it really is from the station you will arrive at, and whether the staff were there at 2am. A listing whose reviews all praise the bar and none mention sleep is telling you exactly what kind of hostel it is.

Two words in the description do the same job. “Social” and “lively” are not neutral: they mean a bar, events, and a building that does not go quiet. “Quiet”, “family-friendly” and “no stag or hen groups” are the opposite signal, and they are stated deliberately.

The rules that are not in the price

Hostels carry house rules that hotels gave up decades ago, and they are binding. Check for a curfew or a lockout — rare now, still real in some association hostels and in small towns, and a curfew will end an evening early. Check the reception hours: if it closes at 22:00 and your train gets in at 23:30, you need a keycode, not an apology.

A few properties set an upper age limit or restrict booking to a band of ages; a few others do not accept solo travellers under 18, and many do not accept children in dorms at all. None of this is common, all of it is in the property rules, and it is the kind of thing that is discovered at the desk rather than on the way there.

Sleeping bags are banned by a great many hostels, for bed-bug control. Linen is normally included in Europe and often a charge elsewhere. Kitchens are usual and are one of the genuine economies of a hostel; laundry is usual and is not.

When a hostel is the wrong answer

Book a hostel for the money, for the kitchen, or for the company, and it is hard to beat. There are three cases where it is the wrong instrument and the saving is illusory.

The first is the early departure. If you have a 05:30 flight, a dorm is a bad bet: you will pack in the dark among sleeping people, and one late-returning room-mate costs you the night before a long travel day. The second is two or more people, where the per-person arithmetic has usually already turned against it. The third is work — a hostel with excellent wifi still has nowhere to take a call, and the common room that makes it a good place to arrive makes it a poor place to concentrate.

The honest middle ground is a private room in a hostel: the kitchen, the staff and the notice board, with a door that shuts. It is usually priced close to the cheapest room in a small hotel, and which of the two is better depends entirely on whether you want the common room or the quiet.

Common questions

Is a hostel always cheaper than a hotel?

For one person, almost always. For two, often not: a dorm bed is priced per person and a room is priced per room, so two beds have to beat one room. Add the extras that hostels charge separately — towels, breakfast, the city tax collected at check-in — before deciding, because they are a bigger share of a cheap bed than of an expensive one.

Are hostels only for young people?

No. The great majority take adults of any age, and the association hostels that once had age caps have largely dropped them. A small number still set an upper age limit or a narrow age band, and some do not take children in dorms; where that applies it is stated in the property’s rules, so read them rather than assuming either way.

Are hostels safe?

The building usually is — keycard doors and staffed receptions are standard. The dorm is a shared room, so treat it as one: use the locker, bring your own padlock, and keep your passport, cards and phone in it rather than under a pillow. Most losses in hostels are opportunistic and a locked locker prevents them. A female-only dorm is bookable almost everywhere if you would rather have one.

What is the difference between a hostel and a guesthouse?

A hostel’s core product is a bed in a shared room, with communal space and a kitchen around it. A guesthouse’s is a private room. The two overlap in the middle — plenty of properties list as hostels and are mostly private rooms — which is why it is worth reading what a listing actually sells rather than what it calls itself.

Can I book a private room in a hostel?

Yes, at most of them, and it is the option people overlook. You get the kitchen, the staff and the location at close to the price of the cheapest room in a small hotel. The search on this page returns hostels only, private rooms included, so it is a fair way to compare the two.