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Where is a good place to open a hostel?

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Josh started this discussion 18 years 2 months ago

Where are some good locations for new hostels?

I think that any major hub city in the US could benefit from additional hostels. Many American cities do not even have one hostel (Detroit, Michigan, and Berkeley, California are two that immediately come to mind).

Do you know of any good locations somewhere in the world that could benefit from a new hostel?

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Tim

17 years

The hostel scene is saturated in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Argentina, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, and a lot of the more popular Central European cities so I wouldn't recommend starting a hostel there. But there are a lot of major destinations with no hostels.

In Europe there are no hostels in Toulouse, France; Waterford, Ireland; Leeds, Lincoln, Ludlow, Norwich, Sheffield and Shrewsbury in England. Milan - Italy's largest city - only has three hostels; and Turin only has one hostel.

As mentioned earlier there are several major US cities with no hostel. These include Baltimore, Columbus, Des Moines, Detroit, Kansas City, Memphis, Milwaulkee and Pittsburgh. There are plenty of other smaller cities in the US that could also easily support a hostel.

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Josh Hostels

17 years

Thanks for that long list. I think that there are people working to reopen the Baltimore Hostel:
http://www.baltimorehostel.org/
They have a mailing list that can be subscribed to for more information on that project.

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fencer_david

17 years

hosteling in VENEZUELA is the best option bcause there are no hostels here, com on e-mail me: [email][email protected][/email]

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Tim

17 years

A hostel in Venezuela would do very well because of the lack of competition, however I have heard the the current government makes it very difficult to run a business. Still it may be worth the hassle.

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fencer_david

17 years

A hostel in Venezuela would do very well because of the lack of competition, however I have heard the the current government makes it very difficult to run a business. Still it may be worth the hassle.

As you said it would be difficult, but you have to be optimistic, and also we have something called Cooperatives, being a cooperative as well you don't have to pay taxes, you just have to want it I'll show you a little video from my country, and Still virgin and without Hostels, and very few Hotels as well, also i could find very cheap lands to make it real wherever you see in that video, or even better, everywhere i can seek for a piece of land... check them out

Venezuelan Paradise
Venezuelan Paradise 1

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lincoln

17 years

The hostel scene is saturated in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Argentina, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, and a lot of the more popular Central European cities so I wouldn't recommend starting a hostel there. But there are a lot of major destinations with no hostels.

interesting stuff. just wondering what makes you say this. wondering most specifically about argentina...

anything you could tell me about that would be very interesting

thanks

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Tim

17 years

interesting stuff. just wondering what makes you say this. wondering most specifically about argentina...

Argentina does have a lot of hostels. There are 107 in Buenos Aires alone. That's more hostels than any other city on Earth.

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sebastianmas

15 years

Hi Tim, where did you look at or where we can see how many hostels are in a city?

thanks

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santa klaus

15 years

Most hostels are listed on Hostelworld.com, for example.

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hosteltrail.com

15 years

I'm sorry to say but I think that Venezuela is a definate no-no for a hostel startup at the minute - precisely for the reasons mentioned by Tim. We were contacted by one of the big players on the Caribbean a few months back asking if we would help them to sell up and I'm sure this isn't an isolated case. It's a shame because it's a beautiful country and with the right investment and government approach, it could be flooded with foreign backpackers.

Argentina is indeed reaching crazy levels in terms of hostels but it's like anywhere - if you start a really good hostel and you make the right connections, you'll start to pull clients from your competition. You'll almost certainly have to accept the fact though that you wont ever appear in the LP or top guide books (since there are 100 hostels ahead of you in line).

I've always felt the safe and secure way to travel around a country is to find a nice place that you feel would appeal to travellers but as yet doesn't have a hostel - start one up and then focus your marketing resources on promoting the town to backpackers with the knowledge that if/when they come, they'll likely stay with you.

Of course, another factor is where you would be happy living....there's little point in starting a hostel by the beach if you hate the smell of the sea. All to often, there is too much importance placed on where a good business opportunity exists and too little on what your quality of life would be like if the business becomes a success.

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