Destination guides > Australia > Travel essentials > Hostels
Hostels
Hostels are a great cheap accommodation option, however they have much more to offer than a cheap bed. A good backpackers’ hostel is also a place to party, meet new friends from around the world and get information on other cool places to go.
Hostels provide dormitory accommodation, along with shared shower and kitchen facilities. Generally there are four to six people sharing a room and there is somewhere like a TV room or bar where you can meet other travellers. Often the people running the hostel are backpackers themselves, and are a mine of information about places to see, things to do and transport and accommodation options elsewhere in Australia.
Australia has some of the world’s best hostels and they often include facilities that you would seldom find in hostels in Europe or North America such as spas, swimming pools and courtesy buses. The Australian backpacking industry is very competitive and this keeps the standard of accommodation relatively high.
The best hostels are usually either small hostels in historic buildings that are full of character or newer purpose-built places with first-class facilities. Hostels in popular destinations such as Airlie Beach, Byron Bay, Mission Beach, Noosa and Port Douglas tend to be excellent as the competition between hostels in these places drives up the standard of accommodation. However hostels in bigger cities and less visited regional centres aren’t as predictable.
A good hostel should provide a way for travellers to meet each other with common areas and a design that is conducive to meeting other people. This is one of the main features that distinguish hostels from hotels and motels, which are designed to offer their guests privacy. For this reason, many hostels with self-contained facilities (usually those that are former motels or apartment complexes) don’t have as much atmosphere as your average backpackers hostel.
Hostels that are located above pubs are among the worst. In many of these places the bar downstairs is the main business and a lot less attention is paid to the accommodation.
Hostels catering to working holidaymakers are usually not that great either, existing solely to provide accommodation to backpackers picking fruit and they do little for travellers that happen to be passing through town and only staying a night or two. However the management of workers’ hostels do have a lot of employment contacts and sometimes also provide transport to and from work. These hostels work for the employers as much as the backpackers and they have more rules than your standard hostel. Often there are restrictions on alcohol consumption in workers’ hostels as local farms rely on them to provide a reliable, hard-working and sober workforce. Despite the overall lower standard of workers’ hostels, there are a handful that stand out from the crowd.
Although we believe that the hostel reviews in the BUG Australia guidebook are more comprehensive than any other travel guide, the reviews on this website are even more detailed and allow you to write your own hostel reviews and read reviews submitted by other travellers. A lot of the hostels reviewed on our website also allow online booking; where this is possible there will be a booking engine at the bottom of the review.
Hostel chains
There are three main groups of hostels in Australia. Each of which offers its own discount/membership card that gives discounts on accommodation and transport.
Nomads
Nomads (website www.nomadsworld.com) started out by setting up hostels above pubs and the overall quality of their hostels wasn’t all that great. However they seem to be really cleaning up their act and have recently opened some excellent hostels. Nomads is the smallest of the three hostel chains.
The Nomads travel card offers over 600 discounts in Australia including around $1 off Nomads hostels. Transport discounts include 10% off McCafferty’s/Greyhound buses, 5% off Oz Experience and the Wayward bus and discounts on trains operated by Great Southern Railway. The Nomads card costs $34 and is available from Nomads hostels.
Nomads also offer some very good welcome packages that include a Nomads card, airport transfers, tours and a few nights accommodation. This is good value and it is nice to have no worries about accommodation when you first arrive in the country.
VIP
VIP Backpackers Resorts (website www.vipbackpackers.com) is a group of independently run hostels that vary enormously as far as facilities are concerned.
The VIP card is one of the most useful hostel cards and a lot of backpackers buy one. Hundreds of hostels in Australia, New Zealand and other countries give discounts to VIP cardholders. Most of the hostels give a $1 discount per night. The card also has excellent transport discounts such as 10-15% discounts on McCafferty’s/Greyhound buses, discounts on trains operated by Great Southern Railway and discounts on rental cars. A VIP card costs $37 for one year and is available online and from VIP hostels.
Hostelling International (HI)/Youth Hostels Association (YHA)
The Youth Hostel Association (website www.yha.com.au) is the Australian branch of Hostelling International (HI) and its hostels have a fairly consistent standard. In Australia the YHA’s main market are independent travellers as opposed to school groups that fill a lot of European hostels and consequently youth hostels in Australia have a much better atmosphere than the institutional hostels that you find in Europe. The competition between hostels in Australia has also forced the YHA to clean up its act and you won’t find any YHA hostels in Australia with chores, a curfew or a lockout. Although YHA hostels in Australia are better than Hostelling International hostels elsewhere, they still have a reputation as a dull and relatively boring place to stay and very few YHA hostels fit the description of 'party hostel'.
Most travellers take along a YHA or Hostelling International card. This hostel card allows the biggest accommodation discounts with savings of at least 10% per night. The card is good at any of the thousands of hostels around the world, including over 140 in Australia, that are part of the Hostelling International organisation. Most YHA youth hostels only give discounts on this card so it is essential if you are planning on staying at a lot of YHA hostels. Many independent backpackers hostels will also extend the Nomads or VIP discount to YHA members making this a good card to bring along even if you don't stay at that many YHA hostels. HI or YHA cards are available through many student travel agencies as well as at YHA offices and hostels and costs US$28/£15.95/€20 although you can collect stamps towards a membership for every night you stay at a YHA hostel at the non-member rate, which can work out cheaper than buying a card in advance. The YHA card also has good discounts on transport including discounts on car rental, bus and train travel.
