How hostels are being redefined in the post-pandemic era

13.10.2023 - 11:47 / nationalgeographic.com

When German teacher Richard Schirrmann converted a former classroom to accommodate young travellers on a budget in 1909, no one could have predicted the global movement he would inspire. Three years later, Schirrmann bought a castle near Dortmund to establish the world’s first youth hostel and by the 1920s, Germany had 2,000 low-cost hostels dotted around its rural areas. But it wasn’t until a group of Brits brought the idea back to the UK and launched the Youth Hostels Association (YHA) in 1930 that the new movement gained its poster child.

This July, after more than 90 years in operation, the charitable organisation announced it will sell off 20 of its 150 hostels. Given the hammer blows of the pandemic, it wasn’t wholly unexpected. YHA’s affiliated New Zealand organisation collapsed in December 2021, with the loss of 11 hostels. By December 2022, 19 of YHA Australia’s hostels were also permanently shuttered, and the country’s Nomads hostel brand shut down or sold six of its 16 properties. 

“All hostel organisations around the world were really badly affected by the pandemic, because obviously we’re relying on people sharing space,” says YHA chief executive James Blake. “We lost 80% of our income in the first year of the pandemic and 50% in the second year — that’s about £70m in all.” He points out that it wasn’t until April 2022 that hostels were finally able to operate normally again in the UK, when shared dorms reopened. 

For the YHA, the aftermath of the pandemic brought what Blake describes as a “perfect storm” of challenges: inflation (labour, laundry, food), spiralling energy costs and the cost-of-living crisis. It’s this, coupled with depleted financial reserves, that’s forced it to sell off 13% of its UK hostels. 

Despite this latest blow to the industry, demand for hostel beds doesn’t appear to have dropped much — the YHA says guest numbers are now running at about 90% of pre-Covid levels. And according to data from online travel agent and booking site Hostelworld, in November 2022 bed bookings in some countries around the world surpassed 2019 levels. Although the hostel market is still strongest in Europe — accounting for 50% of bookings on the Hostelworld platform — bookings have soared in countries that have historically been cheaper to travel in, such as Egypt (up 106%), Turkey (67%), Guatemala (87%), Mexico (55%) and Laos (33%).

Price is certainly one of the biggest challenges right now. Anecdotally, it’s thought that many cities are operating at half the hostel bed capacity they were before the pandemic. To offset spiralling costs, hostels have leaned more heavily on price surging — increasing prices when demand for them is greatest. As a result, the cost of dorm beds has rocketed,