When I travelled through Europe I spent most of my time in hostels. To be honest, the only time that I didn’t stay in a hostel was when I was visiting family members. I took the last weekend of my trip to visit my grandparents and younger cousins that lived about a 4 hour bus ride from the current destination I was at.

Now I know that a hostel isn’t for everyone. This is why today I wanted to open up the discussion of whether or not it’s worth to stay in hostels while traveling through Europe.

What are the good aspect of staying in a hostel?

Instant social life.

You don’t have to look far for friends when you’re staying in a hostel. The beauty about a hostel is that there’s an instant social life. You don’t have to do anything to find fun. Literally everyone at your hostel is looking to have a good time. There’s always something going on and you won’t be bored for one minute.

Hostels are very cheap.

As we all know, hostels are much cheaper than hotels. On average I paid anywhere from $15 to $20 a night while staying in hostels. My favorite part was that some hostels offered free breakfast and dinner. For a boy that loves to eat like me in the morning this was ideal. Hostels were much cheaper than any other option. Sure I could’ve stayed with CouchSurfing friends, but then you’re forced to hang out with the same person the whole time.

Central locations.

Hostels are usually in the heart of the party and the city. All hostels that I stayed at were like a ten minute walk from the train station. This also meant that all of the clubs, restaurants, gyms, and stuff worth mentioning were close by. What’s better than being close to everything?

You can cook your own food.

What I love about hostel life is that you cook your own food. After eating junk food for a few days you’re going to be starving for some home-cooked meals. At the hostel, the staff can let you know where the closest grocery store is and then you can cook your own meals. Delicious.

You can say that I might be slightly biased towards hostels due to all of the fun that I had. What are the negatives of hostel life?

Difficult to focus.

Some nights I found it pretty challenging to get any work done. There was just too many people out and about having fun. My natural instinct is to join in on the fun and not to be the lame guy that’s hanging out on his laptop. This makes it tough to focus on my blogging work. What can you do?

Not as clean.

Let’s be totally realistic. When you have over a dozen travellers staying in the same place and drinking until the late hours of the night, the place isn’t going to be all that clean. Can you handle sleeping and living somewhere that’s not totally clean? This will be a make or break for most.

There are both pros and cons to staying in a hostel. I hope that this article makes the decision easier for you and you can figure out if it’s worth staying in a hostel the next time you travel.

Check out the other articles from the Travel Like a Rockstar Series:

Can I Travel When I’m Not Rich?

4 Little Known Ways of Saving Money While Traveling.

3 Things You Must Know About Traveling

Martin Dasko

Martin Dasko