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It’s a strange phenomenon that many of Europe’s most famous hostels are also the ones that get the most criticism. Perhaps the best known places attract the most newcomers to the hostel game, so these places are often filled with people who’ve yet to learn the standards of common decency for hostels yet? Or it could be that these are some of the largest hostels in Europe’s largest party cities, so the ratio of careless drunken idiots to rational people is extremely high?
Your guess is as good as mine, but here is a list of five famous hostels that seem to have as many detractors as they have fans, at least among the hardcore hostel crowd:
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We recently wrote about the obvious fact that more hostels are adding private rooms to their offerings, and this phenomenon brings up another undeniable trend in hostelling, and one that is closely related as to that as well. Especially in the past 5 years or so, the number of older people using hostels as a way to save money and meet people seems like it’s gone up sharply.
Hostels are so taken for granted as great budget accommodations that independent travelers can find just about everywhere on earth, that it’s kind of weird to think about the history of hostelling. So let’s do that for a moment, shall we?
Hostelling is coming up on its 100th anniversary in 2009. You might think the idea of hostels is much older, and that’s probably true - but according to Hostelling International, the first honest-to-goodness hostel opened in Germany in 1909. (Don’t double-check this fact with Wikipedia, because they say something different. And we all know how easy it is to screw with Wikipedia.) At any rate, hostels were once all “youth hostels,” with age limits and curfews and midday lock-out periods. These days there are fewer and fewer hostels with any kind of age limit, and curfews and lock-out times are also becoming more rare.
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As someone who has been traveling on a low budget for more years than I care to admit, I can tell you of one great trend in the hostel community that has become more clear every year: More and more hostels are adding private rooms to their menu of choices. The total number of hostels around the world seems to be expanding greatly in the last decade or so, and many of the newer ones have few, if any, of the large dorms rooms that the principle of hostelling was built upon in the first place.
Everyone’s trying to “go green” these days, and that includes travelers. And green travel isn’t just restricted to buying carbon offsets or staying in expensive “green” resorts - even budget travelers can be more eco-friendly these days. One easy way to do that is to stay in green hostels, which are becoming more common. A new eco-friendly hostel that’s opening up in Barcelona is a perfect example.
Barcelona Urbany is currently under construction in one of Spain’s most popular backpacking cities, and is being billed as the “first eco-friendly hostel.” While there are certainly other hostels around the world that have some environmentally progressive policies, this will be the first in Barcelona and probably the first purpose-built eco-hostel.
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