Choosing International Travel Accomodations
Passport Travels
I am first going to start by talking about traveling abroad. Basically anywhere you would need to have a passport. I cannot cover all things, but I am going to go over how we figure out where we are going to spend the night. Another important piece of information is when you do that. After all the last thing you would want to do is be wandering around late at night not sure where you're going to stay (this was Erin in the middle of Belgium during Christmas time).
There are three basic options for any average traveler looking to move on a budget. The apps may change, but the result does not. Usually the first step in our traveling is looking for and finding a cheap plane ticket. When we have found this plane ticket we immediately look at what I like to refer to as “The Big Three.”
Those three are as follows: hostels (Hostelworld), home rentals (Airbnb), and hotels (Hotels.com). The majority of my traveling is done using one of those three options and usually using one of the listed apps.
I want to find a balance between comfort and cost. Some places only become affordable to a budget traveler when you are staying in hostels.
Hotels $$$
This is the easy one. Everyone has stayed in a hotel once in their life and likely more. You have a room to yourself, likely with one or two beds, bathroom, and if you're lucky you have a small kitchenette. Sometimes just a fridge, but nice to have a few extra things.
I try to not stay at hotels and they are almost never worth the cost when compared to the others. They are usually used by people who have a comfort level with them or simply do not know about the other options... I am here to explain just how many choices you have and how reasonable they actually are.
I would advise joining some sort of rewards program so that the few times you do use hotel rooms you can get some additional benefit.
I usually use hotels.com, but anyone can use trivago, kayak, tripadvisor and whatever else you’re used to. All prices are relatively the same. A big piece of advice I would give to anyone is to check out the reviews and hold your judgement. Erin and I normally check out reviews from everywhere, hold our judgement, and try to make the best choice based on our needs. We also try to not stay at hotels unless we are in the states and even then we try to go camping whenever we can.
Airbnb $$
This was a great creation by some smart people. In short it is a website or app people use to find places they can stay temporarily. Sometimes that is one night, but most often it is used to stay a few days and sometimes even more.
Airbnb does not own any properties, but chooses to act like a middle man instead. People rent a room in their home, an entire house, or an entire apartment. Also sometimes people rent out a sofa in their home as well. I doubt I will ever partake in this, but worth mentioning so we have full disclosure.
Most of these places are a small bit cheaper than a hotel room and they are almost always better than their similarly priced hotel. You have very good, updated, and reliable reviews to go off of. Honestly the home owners try way too hard to make sure their reviews are good. This is a great alternative to hotels and worth trying.
Most of the times when you get an entire home being an apartment or house it comes fully furnished. Most of the times even with a full set of linens. If you’re spending a week or more in an area then I would try to stay at one. You can get a place with a full kitchen and then you can make yourself food more easily.
Then there is the normal airbnb where you rent a room. Most of the time you have a bathroom and a room to yourself. If they are a good host you can lock your room and reliably know you can leave your stuff in there. A lot of the time these places even have basic hygiene you can use.
Look at any vacation spot you want to go in the world and you will likely find some cool Airbnb’s awaiting you. I have stayed in a few and have found them to be very good. Once you get past the slight awkwardness of sometimes meeting the host you will find them to be worth a try.
Hostels (Hostelworld) $
What We Thought vs. Reality
As an American what we know of hostels can really be summed up in one of two ways. First thoughts of “dirty”, “disgusting”, and various other ill placed thoughts on a place only meant for the poor or filthy person. The second is from the horror movie Hostel. I won’t explain the movie here, but I will briefly tell you it is not an accident Americans want nothing to do with hostels.
Hostels are a fairly normal thing almost everywhere in this world outside of the US. Hostels can be found in the US, but it is far more rare than other places such as Europe or South America. There are nice ones and there are bad ones. You have a much better chance of finding a good one if you pay attention to the many reviews which can be found using apps such as hostelworld.
What You Can Expect
I can tell you from personal experience I rather enjoyed my time at hostels and so has Erin. For those of you who don’t know hostels they are basically like a college dorm. These dorms have anywhere between 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and even more beds in them. They can be small single beds spaced a few feet apart and are typically bunk beds. These rooms sometimes have their own bathroom and in a lot of cases you are using a shared bathroom looking similar to a locker room.
The first hostel I stayed in was The Times Square Hostel in Dublin, Ireland. Erin and I stayed in a 4 bed ensuite with one roommate. Important to this article is the advice we received from the little vegan we shared the room with. He told us anything more than 6 starts turning into a madhouse and to be prepared if we choose to stay in one.
These places are likely the cheapest of the three options especially for any solo traveler and it makes sense. After all, you are basically renting a bed for the night. They all have different amenities, but I will list through some of the basic ones. They offer wifi in most of them without an additional charge usually, linen (including towels some of the time), food, obvious bathroom access, and any other basic amenity you can imagine finding at a hotel minus the privacy.
People who frequent hostels usually do it for one of two reasons. The obvious one is the cost, but the little known is the experience. It is a great place to meet other travelers who have great stories to share. A lot of these places have common areas, bars, or offer specific opportunities to meet people such as walking tours.
Things to Consider
The food found at hostels is surprisingly not bad. Usually you can get a free breakfast. Normally it's a very basic continental breakfast and I would not expect much. Usually the best part is the view, but when it comes to these trips I am only trying to get calories in and for cheap so for me these are always a nice little treat. In some cases you can get a free dinner as well and the occasions I received food was pretty awesome actually.
Most of the ones I have gone to are ensuite meaning there is one bathroom shared amongst the people staying in that dorm. Normally Erin and I prefer to go to hostels with 4-6 beds, but we sometimes find ourselves in bigger ones. Rooms normally cost less with the more beds they have in them. So if you want a room with 4 instead of 8 then you are likely to spend a couple extra dollars. Also most hostels do have single bed rooms- basically a lesser version of a hotel room.
They always have some type of locker, lock box, or cage where you can place your belongings. Some even offer to rent you a lock in case you did not bring your own. We are always traveling with at least one lock a piece if not more and usually attached to our backpack so these lockers are a very easy thing for us to manage.
Hostels are cheap options which should be at least explored by anyone trying their hands at budget travel.
Honorable Mention, Couchsurfing $
This is an option I have thought about, but never actually tried myself, I encourage you to go to the website and check it out. For those of you who are too lazy or simply don’t feel like it I will tell you what I know.
This option is free and it is often used in many cities you may want to travel. Quite literally this is where people offer couches or sometimes beds at their home where you can stay for free. You get to stay in a place for free and they get to meet you. Simply put I think it is a true version of social media.
Very interesting option and something I intend to explore. You can look at the profiles people put out there and they can look at yours. Both parties will have some sort of review they give for the other afterwards. You can stay with people and then look at what the last 30 or so people said about staying with them.
Most of the people you can stay with are interesting and most usually want to interact with you in some way. It is a great way to see the place you’re staying at from the eyes of a local and usually an interesting person.
This is what I consider next level travel and quite a few people travel the world using this option. Very cheap and I would encourage anyone using it to do your host the favor of providing them something. I intend to buy my host dinner and/or breakfast. I think it would only be fitting.
Final Thoughts
My final thoughts on overnight staying abroad are this. Erin and I end up juggling our needs. They are as follows: location, cost, safety, and freedom. When we travel we are trying to do everything we can to maximize our travels. That usually means we want to be close to the destinations we are trying to be at, but the closer you are the more it will cost you.
Worth thinking about is how sometimes there are accommodations which might appear to be an uncomfortable distance from your chosen location, but are really close to some type of public transit which might mean it’s not such a bad option. When we wanted to stay in Cork, Ireland we could not find a place for under $50 a night and even then they were not very good, but we did find a place in Carrigaline we could stay at for $30. We had to walk half a mile to get to a bus stop and we had to pay about $5 a piece to get back into town. In the end the cost ended up being about $40 if you add in transport, saving us a small bit of money and adding an extra part to our trip plus a great place to sleep.
Every destination I think of going to I always end up looking at the Big 3. After all, some destinations such as Iceland can be reached for fairly cheap. It is not unheard of to get round trip tickets to Iceland for under $450 from any major city in the US. Now once you get there you’re not going to find any place to stay for much under $40. The cheapest of Hostels are around $45, Airbnb’s are roughly $60 (that is for the smallest of rats nests), and lastly hotels for way more than that.
If you end up wanting to go anywhere and do anything it is similarly expensive. They have it all figured out in Iceland. Get you there and then boom you’re stuck so you will pay. Iceland is a destination I intend to go to some day, but I will caution anyone to do a few minutes of research prior to going.
The basic apps I love are my Big 3 apps. Some sort of hotels app, Hostelworld, and Airbnb. Erin and I literally used the Hostelworld app as we were just about to enter Dublin, Ireland on a bus. We used the bus’ wifi and when we got off the bus we were about 500 yards away from our new home for the next 2 days. It was a pretty cool experience to have.
Important Consideration
One big important thing I feel is worth mentioning. The cheaper you go the better your experience is going to be. With a hotel you get to be very comfortable and feel very safe. Also if you’re lucky you have HBO along with all parts of the TV which make you feel at home. All of these are bad things which end up with me spending more time in my hotel room experiencing nothing and missing out on the world around me. Travel, for me, is experiencing the world- not some nice hotel. To put it plainly hotels are bad for me and if I use them properly they are a waste.
Airbnb offers some cool experiences and has offered me some. One night we spent in Kinsale, Ireland found us speaking with a lady for about 3 hours. We spoke of her travel, her profession, politics, and she was kind enough to answer a million questions about the day to day lives of people living in Ireland. This type of experience happens all the time.
Hostels are very good for meeting other people. In Dublin, Ireland at the Times Square Hostel they had an activity every night for people to get to know each other. Some nights it was cheese and wine. Other nights it was beer tasting and all of it was free. At a place I stayed at in Cancun, Mexico called Mayan Monkey Hostel there was a rooftop bar. On our first night at the bar they had a beer pong tournament where tequila replaced beer and it lasted for hours. Another night there they played Jenga with very large pieces. We met people from South Korea, Australia, England, and France on this rooftop.
Go cheap and get more.
Making friends at the beer pong tournament on the rooftop bar at the Mayan Monkey Hostel in Cancun, Mexico.
