Hostels, also called youth hostels, provide short-term accommodation to travellers or backpackers, particularly encouraging outdoor activities and cultural exchange for the young. Hostels are also often called backpackers' hostels (or backpackers' for short), particularly in Australia and New Zealand.
In a hostel guests rent a bed (sometimes a bunk bed) in a dormitory and share common bathroom, kitchen, and lounge rooms. Private rooms are often available. The main benefits of a hostel are firstly the low cost of the accommodation compared to alternatives such as hotels, and that one gets to meet other travellers from all over the world. Hostels are usually less formal and less expensive than hotels. They are most frequently used by young travellers. In the past many hostels imposed age limits, but today it is more common for hostels to accept guests of all ages. Despite the openness of modern hostels, the majority of guests are traditionally and overwhelmingly between the ages of 18 and 26.
Hostels provide opportunity for multicultural enlightenment. There is more interaction between guests than in traditional hotels, and many hostels provide activities to their guests for free or at low cost. There are some potential drawbacks to using hostels.
Some hostels have a curfew, daytime lockouts, and/or require to do chores, but often these rules have been abandoned, see below.
Theft can be a problem since guests share a common living space, but this can be prevented by locking belongings up. Most hostels offer some sort of system for safely storing your valuables, and many offer private lockers. However, for the greater part travellers are equally concerned for the well-being of their own belongings that theft of other people's belongings rarely takes place.
One potential drawback to staying in hostels is difficulty sleeping because of noise, whether from snoring or someone returning to the room late in the evening. For this reason, some hostels associations fix times for last admission and lights out.