size (m^2)

Hi, I think that you first should look your local regulations.

Let me give you an example: we are building the hostel, so when I asked the architect the number of beds we were able to accomodate, he came up that our city requires 15 cubic meters for a person (and they count 3 meter as the maximun ceiling high).

The majority of hostels in my city accomodate between 4 to 5 people in 15 cubic meters :evil: , and if you navigate european websites pictures, you will see NICE hostel rooms with even less space for every person.

It seems to me that in some cities either there are no rules, or rules are different.

In our particular case we decided to have big common areas (and more than one). For a 80 beds hostel, our main common area is 42 square meters (250 cubic meters). We "extended" the loby as another common area (loby, bar, computer room) 80 square meter (400 cubic meters). Be aware that as far as I know, there are no such measurements in my city, and remember that we are "recycling" an old psychiatric institution, so we took advantage of some particularities of the property).

Another opinion that I could give is to think about your potential clients. La Plata in Argentina is not a tourist city. It is 600.000 hab city, capital of the state plenty of universities students, and people coming in for paperwork, small business, and receiving medical treatment. So we expect a vast diversity of passengers, and the only way to have all of them is trying to "separate" them, big common places (we also have 3 patios), and a gym, and we built 3 double private rooms.

Hope I could help.

Good luck

Gustavo