Solo
What actually happens in the common areas, and how to choose between the two.
Read →Ways to travel
Not everyone sets off for the same reason.
You do not choose a hostel by the age of the people sleeping in it. You choose it by how you are travelling: alone or thirty of you, for three nights or two months, with a class or with two small children. Different situations, and they need different answers.
Six ways
Find yours.
Not by age and not by price. Each page also says what you will not find: it is the quickest way to work out whether a hostel suits you.
As a group
Above that a stay is organised, not booked. What to know beforehand.
Read →With a school
Planning timescales, rooms for teachers, invoicing to the school.
Read →By bicycle
Where a car is more of a problem than a convenience, and where it helps.
Read →With the family
One room for everyone, a restaurant on site, and what not to expect.
Read →For study or work
Internships, doctorates, secondments: weekly rates and somewhere to work.
Read →If you are undecided
Two questions are enough.
Almost everything that changes in a stay depends on these two, not on the budget.
First question
How many of you?
Under ten people you book online, on the hostel's own site, like anybody else. From ten up automatic booking stops working: you need rooms that sit together, meals agreed and an arrival time. It is the threshold that separates two different routes, and it applies to a school class as much as to a group of friends.
How long are you staying?
For one or two nights, location is what matters. From a week up, the restaurant, the laundry and a table to work at start to count — and the price is reckoned by the week, not by the night.
How will you get around?
In Ferrara, Parma and Reggio a car is more of a nuisance than a convenience. In Campiglia, up in the hills and near the sea, you need one.
If none of the six fits
It happens often, and it is normal: two of you go for a concert, you travel with an elderly parent, you arrive by motorbike, you stay three weeks for a job. The six pages cover the recurring situations, not every one.
In that case the short route is to write directly to the hostel you are interested in, saying who you are and when. People answer, not an automatic system.
See the four destinations