Another A-Z of Solo Female Travel and today I want to talk about hotels & hostels. Accommodation! Where to stay!
It’s really down to your budget and your style of travel. For some reason, I seem to be writing this series with backpacking in mind and I have no idea why. It’s not something I do and I’m the solo female traveler I know best. So I’m going to try not to lean towards hostels.
But… there are lots of ups to hostels. Hostels are pretty much the cheapest accommodation around and they’re pretty much the best way to meet people. You’ll get the hotel-style service of having a reception where you can ask all the questions you need and probably book onto tours and adventures. You’ll make friends and meet new people and probably meet the person you’ll refer to for the rest of your life as “the worst person in the world” – the one who wakes everyone up coming home late and then snoring fit to end the world, or the one who thinks they’re the only person in the world to ever play Wonderwall on a guitar, or the one who patronises you about your travels. But 99% of people will be lovely and this person will just be the funny story you tell your friends for years to come.
The accommodation itself will probably be in bunk beds in shared rooms of anywhere between 4 and 30 people and shared bathrooms. All hostels will provide some kind of secure storage for luggage, usually in a locker but occasionally in big drawers under the bed. In a good hostel you might have your own plug and light in your bunk with a curtain to block out the rest of the world. Many provide bedding, some expect you to bring a sleeping bag and it’s never a bad idea to have a lightweight sleeping bag liner to use between you and the bedding.
If you’re scared of being lonely, hostels are absolutely the best place to stay. You’ll soon meet people in the common areas. Explain that you’re new in town and invite them to show you the best place to eat or to get drinks, invite them on the trips you want to do and invite yourself on the trips they want to do. Sign up for activities and events organised by the hostel and befriend anyone who also goes on them. Say hi to the new person arriving in your dorm, offer to show them where to eat and drink. If you’re outgoing, you’ll be great. If you’re shy, someone will probably adopt you.
The downsides of hostels are that you don’t get a lot of privacy or quiet time or sleep. There is always a snorer in a dorm. It’s a rule. There’s always someone who comes home late and noisy and there’s always someone who gets up early and makes a noise. If you’re a heavy sleeper or have some good earplugs, you’ll be fine. If the price and the social aspect outweigh the need for ten solid hours of sleep, you’ll be fine.
You can get the best of both worlds by booking a private room in many hostels – peace and quiet, a bit more security, a space to decompress, all that good stuff. It’s more expensive than a bunk but it’s cheaper than a hotel and you still get all the social aspects.
But hotels don’t have to be expensive. I’ve stayed in some appallingly cheap hotels, the kind where I do not video call my mum because I don’t want to admit that I’ve booked a health hazard. I’ve stayed in some that only retain the title of hotel because the inspector hasn’t been for thirty years. And I’ve stayed in some that are very nice – indeed, some that I’ve only got into because there was a special offer on booking.com – Reykjavik Hilton, I’m thinking of you. The kind of hotel where you feel like you’re leaving sticky urchin fingerprints on everything and you can’t figure out how the bathroom tap works. Generally I favour the lower end – either the budget brand of the cheap chain or the cheapest grubbiest station within a five-minute walk of the station. Near the station is never the most salubrious part of town, for some reason, but I like to arrive in a strange place and not have to wander around and get horribly lost.
I like a hotel because I’m unsociable and I don’t like noise or bunk beds. I don’t want to meet people in a common room. I don’t want to be around drunk people. I know to plenty of people, maybe to you, that sounds like great fun and absolutely something you want. I like to lock myself away in a room with my own bed. I like to have my own ensuite bathroom but it’s not a priority, especially if I’m staying somewhere that has mixed ensuite and shared rooms. In Iceland in February, I was in a guesthouse where there were six or eight rooms on my floor and only two of them had a shared bathroom. As the other room was only occupied for a day or two out of my week, I effectively had my own personal non-ensuite bathroom.
There are lots of ups to a hotel. If your budget will stretch to it and if you want some peace and quiet, go for the hotel.
I suppose I should throw in how to find them. I hear a lot of people talk about Hostelworld – I’ve not used it myself but it sounds like the done thing if you’re backpacking. For hotels, I generally use booking.com and my dad prefers Opodo. On all three of those, you can search by location and date and then filter by distance from city centre, type of room, shared rooms. shared bathrooms, rating and whatever else you want.
But there are other options that aren’t hotels or hostels. In-betweeny things. Guesthouses, apartments, B&Bs, Airbnbs, even campsites. Iceland goes in a lot for guesthouses. Sometimes that means someone’s home, where maybe a floor has been turned over to the guests and your landlord meets you and makes you breakfast and hot chocolate. Sometimes it means soulless rooms in a soulless building with a shared microwave and kettle and a keycode for the front door. They’re a lot cheaper than hotels but generally more peaceful than hostels.
Apartments are great. You get a bedroom and a kitchen and a bathroom and a living space – sometimes it’s a studio apartment so some of those are combined into one room but whatever. All the comforts of home. A fridge where you can store food and save on eating out. A real bathroom. Something comfy to sit on that’s not your bed. Oh, I love an apartment but for a solo traveller, they’re often an expensive option. That said, they can be a very good deal if you’re travelling as a family or a group. When I was a teenager, we used to go to Austria and stay in a Keycamp tent. The moment I turned 18 and was classed as an adult, it became cheaper for us as a family to rent an apartment for two weeks than to stay in a tent for two weeks. I’ve also had some amazing apartments in Tallinn, Glasgow and Ekaterinburg. Aparthotels are a good halfway house – you get the check-in and resources of a hotel but you get your own space with kitchen in a more affordable size.
Airbnbs can vary hugely from a spare room in someone’s house to your own apartment to your own entire house to some random thing converted into a kind of caravan. I don’t often use them – there’s an apartment in Hammersmith that I’ve used twice but you have to apply. You have to fill in a text box telling them why you want to stay and why you’d be a good guest. Is that common for Airbnb? It’s not something I’m a huge fan of. Besides, there are plenty of other reasons not to use Airbnb – its effect on the local housing market, its extortionate fees, the fact that I keep hearing about Airbnbs that don’t actually exist when people arrive there, that sort of thing. But on the other hand, I also hear of many, many people who use Airbnb by default when they’re travelling. They can be very good if you’re not into either hotels or hostels.
And last, camping. Camping generally means carrying your tent and bedding roll and not many people, besides ultralight hikers, really want to carry that amount of stuff when they’re travelling. Many people don’t want to sleep under a sheet of nylon on the ground either. I take my tent to Iceland in the summer because it’s far cheaper and easier than finding bricks-and-mortar accommodation on a budget in high season, or hiring a campervan, and I take it for deliberate dedicated camping trips around the UK in the back of my car. I’m going to Finland in May. I’m absolutely not taking it there. I am taking it on a three-night outdoor adventure around Purbeck in July.
The only rule when it comes to your solo travel is that you do it your way. If you want to stay in a hostel, stay in a hostel. If you want to stay in a hotel, stay in a hotel. Stay in an Airbnb. Stay in a tent. Be comfortable – that is, be physically comfortable with whatever bed you’re sleeping in, be comfortable in your own decision, be comfortable in your safety and be comfortable in your budget. Don’t let other people tell you – or imply to you – where you should be staying and don’t be pressured to go where someone else is unless you want to.