What Experts Are Saying About The Future Of Hostels
Post Covid-19 Hostel Stay
If you have read any of my destination guides, the one consistent travel tip is how the hostel is so key to creating a memorable budget backpacking experience. Once it was clear that budget backpacking and all travel for that matter was going to be put on hold during the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, I immediately began to feel concerned for the future of the hostel experience.
Dorm rooms and hostel common spaces is where I have made most of my travel friends. The hostel is where information is passed, stories shared, and relationship are built. Going into a hostel stay you expect a clean sleeping space, but outside your bunk bed, personal space is not always guaranteed. I was curious to find out how in a post covid-19 travel world will the hostel environment change in order to maintain a safe environment for backpackers.
Now that we are more than a year into the pandemic and some countries start to open up to travelers, I wanted to do a deep dive into how the hostels are preparing for a new way of travel to keep us safe. In addition to my own experience, I reached out some of the most influential budget backpacking travel bloggers to gauge how they feel about future plans to use a hostel going forward.
My First Trip of 2021:
In early 2021, I traveled to Costa Rica with the intention to road trip around and document how different the backpacking experience was at the early stages of the country reopening to tourist. My idea was to have my own car so that I could avoid public transportation, but I still wanted to stay in hostels.
After a short stay in the capitol of San Jose, I set out to start my adventure and I was headed to a more backpacker central destination of Monteverde. I booked a private room in a highly rated hostel and started driving.
When I arrived at the hostel, the owner was there to greet me. The purpose of the greeting was to screen me for Covid-19 symptoms and to explain the new rules of the hostel. He talked about how all his dorm rooms have been converted into group private rooms.
(*this type of conversions of the dorm room was also the case in Mexico as of March, 2021)
As the owner explained to me the new restrictions for use of the common spaces like the kitchen, his tone of voice began to shift into a more somber state. He mentioned how he loved spending time with all the different backpackers in the kitchen space, and at night everyone would hang out and play games. Each morning he would make breakfast for everyone as travel stories and day trip plans where shared around the table. His new restriction was that the community kitchen was closed, and that you can use the equipment to cook and store food, but all meals should be taken outside. I remember sharing his somber feeling of the situation when on a Saturday night I walked by the kitchen to see it empty, and I suddenly felt very alone on my trip.
This is just some of the reflections I had while in Costa Rica with what just may be the future of the hostel stay. For further research I reached out to a group of budget travel bloggers to find out how they feel about hostel stays while traveling, and if in 2021 and beyond will they return to the hostel as an accommodation.
What Did I Find Out?
In order to collect my data, I put together a very simple questionnaire that I sent to my fellow bloggers, finding out how they felt about hostel stays before the pandemic, and whether or not they preferred the hostel as an accommodation. I then asked if they plan to use hostels on any future trips planned.
Here is a quick look at the overall feedback I received from the fifteen bloggers surveyed:
100% of the bloggers I contacted have stayed in a hostel before
90% will return to hostel on their next trip
25% would book a dorm bed again*
*This low percentage is due to covid concerns as well as a feeling of aging out of the dorm experience and booking private rooms instead.
Out of the experts who responded to my questions, I want to focus on two travel experts whose feedback ended up on complete opposite sides.
Lia & Jeremy of PracticalWanderlust.com, also known as Liaremy have traveled together all around the world. They believe that travel is a tool for connection, growth, and positive social impact. Their blog is filled with destination guides, hilarious and inspirational travel stories that shows you that travel doesn’t always have to be perfect. So, when they participated in my expert roundup I was so very excited to see what they had to say.
When I asked them if they plan to stay in a hostel post covid, the answer was “Absolutely!”
So, my next question to them was simply, why?
“We love staying in hostels because of the communal feel, budget-friendly accommodations and connection to local resources and tour operators. There is nothing like sitting in a lounge with a group of other travelers, swapping stories and travel tips, playing cards or sipping drinks and playing music in a totally unfamiliar place far from home. The connection to a community of travelers is something you can’t get at a hotel or vacation rental.”
We can say that based on the data I collected this is the majority feeling, and I think Lia and Jeremy perfectly summed up how important a hostel can be to creating a backpacking experience.
My other expert who’s feedback I want to feature is from Derek of WanderingEarl.com. He named the blog after his middle name Earl, because wandering Derek sounded pretty bad. So, Earl has been traveling around the world non-stop for twenty years. His blog shares his adventures, tips and guides, and you can even book yourself on a Wandering Earl Tour, taking off on guided trips to the many locations he has visited.
Derek was certainly in the minority of the travel bloggers I connected with when it comes to hostel stays. He does not prefer hostel stays while traveling, and he does not plan to use a hostel on future travel. This was not the common feeling about hostels, so I had to also follow up with Derek and ask, why?
“Backpacking hostels are on their way out. They don’t generate enough income to survive anymore. As for me personally, I want a cleaner, more private environment these days and since it’s now possible to get that for just a little more cost than a hostel in most parts of the world, staying in a hostel doesn’t make sense for me”.
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Derek makes a great point about costs. As countries begin to open back up, I have noticed the cost of the hostel stay (depending on what country you are in) has gone up. This can be due to the closure of the dorm room, and the transition to more private space is causing the increase. Hopefully this is a short-term change, but I can see it being too late for a lot of backpackers who are finding comfort and safe places to book immediately.
Conclusion:
My main take away from all this is the idea of first considering what country you are planning to travel to. This will determine the hostels being open again, the cost of the stays, and most importantly your safety. I don’t think anything can really replace the hostel stay for a budget backpacker, so the best thing to do is embrace the changes. My confidence is growing that in time the backpacker experience will adjust and we can get back to creating unique travel experiences together again.