A lot of people miss out on the opportunity to experience new cultures and have the time of their lives because of a common concern that we all share: MONEY. I’m here to tell you: don’t let that fear prevent you from taking that flight! There are a lot of ways you can travel without spending a lot of money. I’ll cover the art of getting there in another article at a later date; there are a lot of ways you can get a cheap flight. For this article, I’ll share with you how I stay in even expensive destinations for a fraction of what you might think.
People I’ve spoken with about this subject are under the impression that your room is going to be the most expensive part of your trip, but I promise you that this should be the one of the least expensive things you need to budget for. I can understand where these people get their misinformation, however. There are a lot of online travel companies that make it easy for people to book hotels online, but contrary to their advertising these are not the cheapest places to stay.
For example, when I search Travelocity for hotels in London this is what my results look like:
The Mayfair - $450 a night
Holiday Inn – Kensington - $321 a night
Rocco Forte Browns Hotel - $821 a night
Feel free to test this on your own. If you search Expedia, Orbitz, Yahoo Travel or others you’ll find similar prices.
Now, the last time I stayed in London, I stayed at a nice place perfectly located for my adventures downtown, and it only cost me $25 a night! What’s my secret? I stayed at a hostel!
Now, don’t jump to conclusions about what staying at a hostel means. If you do, you’ll be missing out on some of the best, safest, cleanest, most centrally-located accommodations available anywhere. Let me stomp out a couple of myths about hostels right away:
- Hostels or other cheap accommodations are dirty: FALSE. I have stayed at a couple of bad places, but I can also say that about hotels that I paid a lot more for. For the most part, hostels are clean and comfortable.
- Cheap accommodations are in bad neighborhoods or are not centrally located: FALSE. My $25 room in London was in Piccadilly Circus, which is both safe and right in the middle of everything. Piccadilly Circus is to London what Time Square is to New York, you can’t get more convenient than that. And my room was clean as any hotel room.
- A hostel will make me share a room with hippies: FALSE (unless you really want to). This is the most persistent myth about hostels I hear. People say to me, ‘yeah, it sounds cheap and that’s great, but I’m going with my wife, boyfriend, or my Xbox 360, and we can’t have others staying in the same room as us. We need our privacy.’ This is certainly a valid point, and the good news that nobody seems to know is that many hostels offer a private room option! In fact, most of the hostels I’ve stayed in have offered private rooms. You get your own shower and everything. Of course it’s a little more expensive than sharing a room, but still won’t cost you hundreds of dollars a night.
Now, let’s run another search for rooms in London, this time using Hostel World (hostelworld.com). Check out these prices for the same time period (remember to multiply the pounds by 2 to get the dollar conversion):
Astor Victoria - £13 a night
St. Christopher’s Village - £18 a night
Astor Museum Inn - £16 a night
Here are a few more sites to search for hostels: hostelbookers.com, hostels.com, & hostelbeds.com. There are usually reviews and pictures of available hostels on all of these sites. If you want to see satellite images of the neighborhood, I recommend using Google Earth to zoom into the location. This is helpful when you want to see how far a place is from the beach, train station, parks etc. You can also just do a Google search for Hostels or Budget Hotels and see what you find.
Finally, here’s my favorite reason for staying in hostels (drum roll please)… the people you meet! For me, it’s not even about the money in the end. I’ve met some amazing people who have become life-long friends at these places because everyone is out to have a good time and make new friends. Hostels have a way of providing an environment which is conducive to social gatherings. They usually have a nice lounge area and a bar. It’s a great way to make friends from all over the world, and then the next time you travel you may have a place to stay for free!
