12 years
Just to be on the safe side, some hostels (and this depends on country, region, culture, etc) have a cutoff time they don't accept walk-ins after. There are many reasons for this, but the general idea is that at 5am there are probably few ppl wandering the streets, and you prob don't want those guys at your hostel. Now, if it's normal for ppl to be on the street 24/7 and coming/going on trains/buses, then it's prob not an issue to accept walk-ins around that time? Sometimes, hostels also use other variables to decide at that time, like whether the traveler is a local or national, or whether he 'looks' like a backpacker, or whether he has alot of baggage (does he fit your normal guest 'profile'), but it's an imperfect science and it can be tough, especially when you're having your receptionist make that call for you... I'm sure other ppl can chime in as to why or why not they accept walk-ins late night...
Wrt regulating who enters the hostel, we actually developed a product for that (www.safehostel.com), but it's in closed beta in Argentina for the moment. SafeHostel helps you check if any other hostels have had issues with the guest thats checking in. Right now, we're also in the process of building BananaDesk, which will be a complete Front Desk tool that will have the SafeHostel feature incorporated, that way you don't have to do a separate check. Check out our launch page for some info on BananaDesk. We'll be launching a management blog in the next few days too :)
-Tim
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