Whilst I usually like to travel without booking accommodation, there are occasions when it’s best to book before you arrive. It can be a good idea to book your accommodation prior to a long flight for example or perhaps well in advance when arriving in a very popular area.
Thankfully this is pretty straightforward over the Internet and thousands of hostels can be booked online.
Here are some of the top hostel reservation sites that you can use to book budget accommodation on your travels.
HostelWorld.com is perhaps the biggest and one of the oldest hostel booking sites. Recently it has been through a re-vamp and is looking very good indeed. HostelWorld.com has a wide range of hostels that you can book for a small online deposit, you pay the rest when you arrive at the hostel.
There are some great reviews to help you make the right decision. Hostels themselves see online reviews (especially those through HostelWorld.com) as a big challenge as much of their business is generated this way. Some hostels have been known to allocate different rooms for those backpackers that have booked though HostelWorld.com in order to generate favourable reviews.
The site itself is straightforward, easy to use and also offers a free sms reminder service.
HostelMania.com was established in 2004 just after the likes of HostelWorld.com and HostelBookers.com but it is very easy to use and has plenty of information. Hostels from all over the world can be booked online. The site itself is simple, effective with a fresh look. I found it clear and easy to use.
HostelBookers.com, like HostelWorld.com is a well established hostel booking site. It was set up in 2003 with the aim of providing hostel reservations without a booking fee.
Like most of the booking sites HostelBookers.com was fairy easy to use and had a great google map display of the hostels in a particular area. Although many other sites have this feature I felt it has been particularlly well excuted on HostelBookers.com.
VIPBackpackers.com started out in Australia where they aimed to build alliances with independent hostels that offered good quality and good value. VIPBackpackers.com has over 1,200 hostels across 83 countries in the alliance and offers discounts for members.
As VIPBackpackers.com is focused more on quality rather than the sheer quantity of hostels they tend to have less hostels to search. This isn’t always a bad thing, but can be frustrating if you are searching for a hostel in a little known place. The VIPBackpackers site was simple, clear, effective and easy to use.
There you have it, a small selection of hostel bookings sites. It’s by no means a definitive list of sites but just a small selection of sites that can be very useful on your travels.
Hey, very good!
VIP has just been reformulated and it looks much better now.
See some Rio de Janeiro bookings on the examples..Is that something i need to know about it? : )
xx
Thanks for the comment Milene,
The VIP site is pretty good, I also like what they stand for too… I'm not a great fan of the chain hostels such as Wake-up in Australia/New Zealand, so their values make sense to me.
I was just using Rio de Janeiro as an example to see what types of hostels they have on the various sites.
Subconciously I could be planning a trip there.
Paul @
TravMonkey.com
Hey,
Thank you for the great information on your site. i love it 🙂
however I would not agree about top hostel reservation sites above. Hostelworl and Hostelbookers are hug no doubt, however I would name Hostelsclub.com and Hostels.com instead VIP and HostelMania.
I do not want to sound rude, however I hope you will understand my point and accept my opinion.
Thanks you
Hey D,
Thanks for letting us know. We are always looking for good tips. We may well revamp the article and republish at some point with other hostel booking sites too.
Thanks,
Paul @
TravMonkey.com
Hi Jane,
I may update this post soon with a couple more resources for booking hostels.
Thanks for commenting!
Paul @
TravMonkey.com
Hi Ian,
Great comments! I think you always get a different perspective on these sites from a hostel point of view.
I remember speaking to many hostel owners who thought many of these sites have too much power over them. Many who concentrated on getting great reviews in order to push business. I guess from a customer point of view this is great.
I recently visited "The Nutty Squirrel Backpackers" in Riga, Latvia, probably the best hostel I've ever stayed in. The owner went out of his way to help and in return I gave them a good review.
Thanks,
Paul @
TravMonkey.com
Hiya.
I run an exceedingly small backpacker's in London so I get to see these sites from a completely other perspective.
I think the big two, as far as where most my bookings come from are Hostelworld and Hostelbookers, of these I would recommend Hostelbookers to any traveller for the following reason:
1) No booking fee other than the 10%. I think here I should point out a common misconception. This 10% is commission kept by the agencies. If you cancel part of your booking you will lose the deposit for that part of the booking. I've know a lot of people thinking that hostels are lining their pockets with part of their deposit which is just not the case. They never see a penny of that.
2) Hostelbooker’s review system is a lot more up to date. Their system relies on the average score of the last 25 reviews. Hostelworld’s review system is the based on that of the last six month. A hostel can change a lot over six months; staff, management and ownership can change, a hostel my start to need refurbishment and indeed be refurbished. They may have outdoor facilities that are only available part of the year.
All these make a great difference and to a hostel. If they has been great for four months and a new owner comes if and takes all the freebies away, reduces the hours the cleaning staff work then I hostel with a fairly high rating may in reality be a real hole. Of course the reverse is applicable and somewhere with poor ratings could have become a great place to stay but you wouldn’t book as they had a low rating.
3) Hostelbookers are selective about their hostels. If a hostel is consistently underachieving then they will be removed from their books. They also limit the amount of hostel per city which means that good hostels stay on the system and bad hostels don’t but those leaving give a new hostel a chance in their place.
4) Having run my place for five years Hostelbookers are the only booking agency to have actually visited us. They chatted with me, inspected the hostel. They also came round about a year ago to film the hostel. When you look on a microsite for a hostel on the site you can rest assured that that is what the hostel is like as it was the agency, not the hostel, that took the footage.
Well I’ve waffled on long enough. I’d imagine you’ll want to be going as the pubs will be opening soon and beers doesn’t drink itself.
Hello Ian!
Great comments!
I work in a hostel here in Sydney and I didn't know these differences about HW and HB. For some reason people tend not to leave reviews on HB as often as they do on HW.
The only thing about HB I don't like, is how they block the beds impeding the bed allocation. It got better though it used to be blocked for 2 days ahead and now its only one. But it is not the case discussing it here…
I think it is quite dangerous only taking reviews in consideration when you book a hostel, because of many factors, but the main one I've noticed since I've started working in this industry is: People who usually had a bad experience won't find anything interesting about the hostel and will spend a day if necessary typing down their bad review while people who enjoyed themselves and are still on the road having fun, will hardly have time to write why they loved staying with you. Not a rule, but pretty common.
Anyway, nice learning a bit more about those websites.
Cheers,
Milene
Hey Milene.
You need to contact Hostelbookers and ask them to change your release period. It can be changed so that bookings can be made up to 4pm on the same day.
I find that people are more likely to leave a review if they've had a bad experience than if they've had a good one. I had one the other day that was nuttier than squirrel poo. Some left a bad review complaining that they got a free beer when they checked in. I've pasted it below so you can have a laugh as the person is obviously quite insane.
It says its an 18-30 hostel, free beer on arrival, soup all day and breakfast included. I can honestly say its the worst place i have stayed. I checked and the bedding smelled clean. A few drinks tonight and I might be able to fall asleep without noticing. This place makes out you can grab a free beer from the bar on arrival [all we say if free check in beer], well you have to ask for it and grab a can of stella from the owners personal fridge. Really really strange. No soup!!![apart from the packets next to the kettle alongside the Milo, tea, coffee, hot chocolate and cordials] Then the breakfast well its on the reception [true but in reality the reception is in the TV/common room and has tables and chairs]. Grab a crossiant and take it back to your dirty room. Bon appetite!!! I left this place as soon as possble. The communal showers are mixed sex. For £60 [most places are chage 80-100 with no extras] I thought i would have a resonable place to relax amongst sight seeing. This place is disgusting and is too expensive for what its worth.
Sorry.
I forgot to ask Milene. Which hostel in Sydney do you work in? I lived in Darlinghurst for a number of years.
Also check out http://www.tfthostels.com/
I think it's a really innovative site that searches many hostel booking engines at once to find the best prices. It also lets you filter by facilities, so if you need wifi and lockers you can have it only show relevant hostels.
I agree with Ian about 6 months being too long to hold old reviews on Hostelworld. I know of hostels that have an average monthly rating in the 90s (%) but because of issues early in the season their overall ratings aren't as good as they should be.
Dear "TravMonkey" Paul
You wrote: " …I recently visited “The Nutty Squirrel Backpackers” in Riga, Latvia, probably the best hostel I’ve ever stayed in …"
You are probably right … For this, I would be glad if you could write a review on
http://www.hostelman.com/Europe/Latvia/Riga/The_N…
HW, HB,… have one negative thing, you can not book smth like less than 24h before you walkin … and sometimes it is important to find a place for to sleep, for example if you hae missed your tain, bus… or you just had the idea to stay in this city.