No two hostels are created the same. The vibe, the aesthetic, and the culture are all crafted out of a vision. What goes into that vision and bringing it to life takes countless hours of planning, measuring, re-imagining, re-measuring, and, finally, building.
But what hostel guests see is always the finished product. They don’t get to see what goes into the process of building something from the ground up—or, in some cases, gutting a property completely—nor do they get to meet the people behind the mastery of building a hostel.
Meet Terri Fisher, the Santa Cruz-based architect who has been working in hostel architecture for decades and has been the brains behind many hostels along the West Coast and across the United States. Fisher, who has been hosteling for most of her life, initially had her interest sparked in hostel architecture when studying abroad in Europe in college.
“It was interesting to see the different types of hostels, from very nice to very interesting to very poor. Everything from old converted stadiums to water mills, castles, we saw a whole gamut of different hostels,” said Fisher. It was around that time that she became interested in ‘adaptive reuse’—the idea of giving new use to old buildings—which hostels were doing to repurpose old facilities like the ones she saw and turning them into communal living spaces.
“Without knowing it, hostels were being sustainable,” said Fisher. “I realized that there was this whole culture behind it.”
Renovating the Santa Cruz Hostel
When she came back to the United States, Fisher finished up architectural school and honed in on her interest in historical reuse. Being located in Santa Cruz, she became interested in the Carmelita Cottages, which were part of the Santa Cruz City Park and are now home to the Santa Cruz Hostel, a large non-profit hostel that is located within walking distance to the beach and downtown Santa Cruz.
Before it became a hostel, there were talks in the works to convert the Carmelita Cottages into one, since the property had a long history of housing all different types of individuals over the years and was centrally located in Santa Cruz. Fisher was hired by the Santa Cruz Hostel Society to help turn that plan into action and renovate the cottages into temporary living spaces.
It would be Fisher's first project of its kind, and it would span several years, but it would go on to kick-start a lengthy career in hostel architecture and restorational consulting. At that time, the Santa Cruz Hostel was a Hosteling International (HI) affiliate, and Fisher’s work on the project caught the eye of the global hostel network. Soon after, she got brought on as a consultant to do more projects like it, which kept her busy and happy, since sustainability in hostels had become one of her passions. Being hired on by HI meant going around to different locations and surveying the sites of old buildings to gauge the feasibility of turning them into a hostel.
“I’d check it out to see how many beds they could get, what it would take to build a new foundation, the things that it would take to convert into a hostel,” said Fisher. “Unfortunately, we had to scratch some of the buildings. Some were frustrating because we couldn’t figure out the logistics.”
But although there were some that ‘got away’, Fisher pointed out certain projects, such as HI Pigeon Point Lighthouse, which used to be an old coast guard corridor, and HI San Francisco City Center, as being some of her favorite buildings that she helped renovate and repurpose into a hostel. As she continued to work with HI, Fisher was brought on to be even more involved and eventually joined the Board of Directors at HI.
Moving Into Monterey
Following those two projects, Fisher got involved with another former HI property that was located in Monterey, California. The property, which had once been a carpenter’s union building, was a hostel for 24 years before it was purchased by HostelingOn, a non-profit formed in response to COVID-19 to preserve and promote hostels. Executive director of HostelingOn and operator of Monterey Hostel, Ryan Oetting, spoke about his experiences working with Fisher on the hostel’s renovations.
“I credit a lot of the aesthetics and property transformation to being able to work with Terri,” said Oetting. “She cast the initial layout vision, and we refined it.”
Oetting acknowledged how special it was to also work with Fisher on a property that she helped renovate more than twenty years ago, when it first became an HI property, adding that collaborating with Fisher was one of the best professional experiences he has had so far.
“Terri was so supportive. I learned a ton from her. She was creative in complementary ways and skillsets,” said Oetting. “She loves hostels. She loves people. She’s definitely a legend, and a lot of hostels are the way they are today because of her.”
Getting Involved With NAHA
Both Fisher and Oetting serve on the North American Hostel Association (NAHA) Board of Directors. In addition to serving on the NAHA Board of Directors, Fisher also serves on the Santa Cruz Hostel Society Board of Directors, where she and the board members focus on educating people on what hostels are, since there is sometimes a misperception amongst the public and the people who stay in and operate hostels on what they are and what they offer travelers.
“Hostels are a great way to travel and a great way to meet people and have a better understanding of the world. I really believe in it, and that’s why I stick with it,” said Fisher. As with breaking misconceptions on what hostels are, the process of building one comes with its own unique challenges. The process of getting a building to meet codes, in particular, as hostel owners know, can be one of the most painstaking parts of the journey of getting a hostel up and running.
“Every time you build a hostel, it’s not easy. It falls through the cracks in building codes, since it’s kind of a hotel, it’s kind of a motel, it’s kind of residential, it’s kind of multi-family housing. It becomes all of that,” said Fisher. “When it’s one building, it meets one code. When it’s multiple types of buildings, it’s under multiple codes. So you have to explain that to the building departments, and in a lot of cases, they don’t know which code to apply.”
Even getting local jurisdictions to understand what a hostel is, Fisher said, can be complicated and require a great deal of explanation. Not only that, but there is often a lot of work that goes into selling the community on bringing a hostel into the neighborhood.
“We kind of have to prove ourselves all the time,” said Fisher.
At the Santa Cruz Hostel specifically, Fisher said that they found the community to be quite receptive to the way the hostel has opened its doors to the neighbors, hosting communal dinners and weekly exhibitions with local artists, showing that the hostel is and can be a neighborhood meeting place. As those events grow in popularity, the perception around hostels seems to have improved, especially as people in the community get to reap the benefits of interacting with the wide range of travelers that come through the hostel each day.
“At those dinners, community members can sit down at the table with international travelers and ask them questions. They love it, and then the hosteler is introduced to community members. It goes both ways,” said Fisher. Although she is heavily involved in the Santa Cruz Hostel and its community, Fisher has been spending more time working with NAHA and bringing different ideas to the board.
Specifically with NAHA, Fisher touched on some of the things the organization is working to do to maintain momentum and boost engagement within the community, such as creating a mentorship program that can serve as a resource of information and knowledge for the next wave of hostel owners.
“My career has been about hostel development, improving hostels if they need improvement to be more desirable so that hosteling gets a good rap so that people find it interesting and a fun stay so that they can go on to another hostel,” said Fisher. “I don’t look at hostels at all as competitors. They’re feeding each other.”
