How To Stay At Hostels For Free.

When backpacking, either solo or in a group, I always recommend you to stay at hostels. They are a great place to meet like-minded travellers and make new friends. Staying in hostels is a right of passage for any world traveller, and they are pretty damn cheap! But how can you cut costs even more and stay at hostels for free? Well, let’s have a look…

Working At Hostels.

Many hostels rely on volunteer staff to run their business, in return, they will generally offer you your food and board (possibly in a private room) in exchange for a few hours of work a day. Some hostels will pay you to work, but generally, if you are just looking to spend some more time in a city and keep costs to a minimum then volunteering part-time would be a great idea.

You can volunteer for a week at some places but many will want you to commit to at least 4 weeks, but this does vary from hostel to hostel. If you decide you really love the city you’re in and the hostel you are staying at, then why not extend your stay for free! You can meet loads of new people, explore the city more, immerse yourself in the culture and really there won’t be much work to do, most of the time you can just chill and chat with the guests. Just make sure you follow hostel etiquette!

There are some really great sites for finding hostels to stay at for free, but you can also just ask reception if they need any help in return for food and board. Here are some sites to find hostel volunteering opportunities.

• Worldpackers – Worldpackers offer stays all over the world and is not limited to stays at hostels, you can find farm stays, NGO stays, schools, orphanages and many more.
• HostelJobs – This site offers both paid and volunteering hostel jobs, you can build a worker profile, and hostels can approach you if you seem like a good candidate.
• Workaway – Workaway is similar to Worldpackers with many different types of stay, but there are many hostels on the site that you can message and arrange to volunteer with.

Offer Entertainment!

Do you have a skill that you can entertain other guests with? If you do you will find that there are many hostels that will offer you a bed for the night for free in return for you to lay on some entertainment for other guests. I met a Spanish guy (not sure on his name) that said he hadn’t paid for a hostel bed in his last two months of travelling. He performed on his guitar in the common area in every hostel he had stayed at in return for free accommodation.

Hostels know that if they entertain their guests they will enjoy their stay more and leave higher reviews, so it’s a no brainer to give a free bed for some free entertainment. Not all hostels offer this, but you will find a lot that do, so if you have a skill that you can entertain the room with, then you could be staying in hostels for free in no time!

Use vouchers.

Now, this is not always a guaranteed way to stay in hostels for free, but if you look around you can find voucher codes for free or discounted accommodation. Some sites like booking.com sometimes run promotions where if you refer a friend and they book a room you will both receive €50 credit. Like I say you can’t rely on vouchers all the time, but when the opportunity arises, you should definitely take advantage of them!

WWOOF.

What is WWOOFing? Well, it stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, technically it’s not staying in hostels for free, however, it’s following the same premise, with food and board on an organic farm in exchange for part-time work. They have farms you can work on all over the world, currently, they have 12,000 hosts in 130 countries with 100,000 “wwoofers”. Their website has a more detailed overview of what it’s all about.

Wwoofing can be a great way to experience a new culture, meet new people and have a great travel experience not many other people will have, and the best part…you don’t have to pay for a thing while you’re there. FYI it does cost £20 to become a “wwoofer” but if you think about the experiences you could possibly have for free, its a small price to pay to support a great network.

Couchsurfing.

Again, not really a way to stay at hostels for free, but it is a way of getting free accommodation and living like a local for a few nights.

Couchsurfing is a great community-based organisation that allows hosts and travellers to connect. Hosts list their property on the site and allow travellers to come and stay with them, free of charge of course, and experience their culture and way of life.

I know it can sound a bit scary, staying with a stranger somewhere you have never been before, but Couchsurfing hosts aren’t just creeps looking for people to stay at their homes. They are usually travellers themselves who have also used Couchsurfing and are now repaying the favour. Couchsurfing is a really cool way to get a look behind the curtain of different cultures and meet some really cool and interesting people along the way.

In Summary.

So let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s not always going to be possible to stay in hostels for free, but there are a few different ways you can try! Hostels are usually pretty inexpensive anyway, but free is always better than cheap. I hope these ideas can help you on your budget-conscious travels and hopefully save you a few pound notes on your journeys!