Screening Guests

In my experience, your first rule should be no locals even if they look like upstanding people. I've found when travelling it is most often the locals in a hostel that steal. They also tend to just want to party and trash the hostel.

The second rule I've used is this: Everytime a guest arrives and I've had a chance to quickly chat to them, I ask myself would I want this person sleeping in my dorm room and in my "house", if I can't say yes, then likely my other guests won't want this perosn sleeping in their rooms or hanging around either.

The third one is common sense or in my mind: "if he/she looks like a hobo, smells like a hobo, and acts like a hobo - then its quite likely a hobo: I someone rocks up to reception with a black garbage bag for their belongs, has no ID and smells of urine your best bet is to turn them away but this goes for all kinds of things - if the person checking-in seems suspicious to you or you have alarm bells going off in your head but you can't quite tell why then be smart and do the safe thing - its always easier to say you're full and turn a bad seed away then to let them in and have to toss one out.

Hope that helps