Hostels

As you may already know… or fear… hostels manly consist of rooms ranging on average from 4 to 12 beds, sometimes the beds are even bunked, forcing you to sleep under some other random traveler. The beds are usually a twin size and can be quite comfortable. Along with your own bed, almost all hostels give you some kind of locker to stash you personal items. Unfortunately, they are usually only the size of a school back-pack, not a back-packer’s back-pack size. As a newer addition that many hostels are now adopting that many people do not know, many hostels now offer private rooms with a bed, but the caveat is that the price can be anywhere from double to triple the cost for a private room in a hostel, however, it will usually still be cheaper than a hotel.

Price

Analysis Method: Picked first top 5 highest user rated hostels from Hostelworld.com and selected the cheapest room rate, the same process followed for private hostel rooms. Then picked first top 5 user rated hotels from Tripadvisor.com and selected the cheapest room rate which checks various hotel websites such as Orbitz, Hotels, Expedia, etc. The best value tag was also applied while searching for hotels to remove the ultra-fancy hotels that you would not stay as you are on a blog about budget travel. Date selected for rates was a 1 night stay on June 2nd, 2015 (random date).

As you can see form the results, hostels on average at 63% cheaper than hotels. Even if you were to reserve your own private hostel room, much the same as a hotel room, it is still 51% cheaper! Thus, if you are going uber cheap, you can get the dorm room style rooms, or you can still travel in private and privacy in a hostel by reserving the private rooms. As for good comparison for how much money saved doing this over a week, you can see from the price comparison that on average a private hostel will save you $821 dollars when compared to a hotel. If you were traveling for 2-3 weeks in Europe, that will add up to $1,642 – $2,463 dollars save, you can not argue with that.

Location

Atmosphere of hostels are something no hotel can match. Most hostels have great relaxation areas with televisions and couches and almost all come with their own pub or bar. You can except to meet a lot of other travelers from all other countries traveling at hostels, able to share you best advice and stories. Sometimes just the people you meet on your journey is more interesting than the destination itself!

Conclusion

In the end, its still up to you if you prefer the relaxed, quiet, fancy hotels which will be amazing in their own regard, or the cheaper, more vibrant social life of the hostels. However, since this blog is about doing your dreams on a budget, we have shown that hostels can save you nearly $1000 dollars a week, surely enough to make even timid travelers contemplate it.