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The American guy in my dorm room had the full jock aesthetic: the polo shirt, the cargo shorts, the Abercrombie & Fitch cap (as was the style at the time). He was using his hand to test the springs on his top bunk, pushing it up and down, up and down.
“I wouldn’t want to be sleeping underneath me,” he announced to the room. “This bed is gonna be getting a workout!”
What he meant was, he was planning to have company. That wasn’t such an outlandish claim at that hostel, because it was a notorious party venue. If you came to stay at the Milhouse in Buenos Aires, you didn’t expect a lot of sleep. You did expect the occasional night with company.
A ‘co-living space’ at YHA Sydney Harbour.
As it turned out, our new American friend did bring someone back to the dorm that night, but she wasn’t so keen on the whole situation.
“Do you think anyone can hear us?” she whispered in the dark. “Yes!” replied seven or eight voices.
That was something like 15 years ago now. I chose to stay at the Milhouse because I was up for a party. I lasted one night before I realised I was a good five or six years older than most of the other guests there, so I went and checked in to a quieter hostel nearby and had a much better time.
Still, when I think about hostel life as a traveller, even now, Milhouse comes to mind. It wasn’t exactly standard back then to have a venue that was just an unashamed booze-and-shag-fest, but it wasn’t surprising to find it, either.
Most hostels across the world would have boozy bars on site, organise pub crawls for their guests, be gathering places for young travellers who were up for meeting people and having a good time with the assistance of a few local brews (oh and having tourism experiences too, I guess).
But generations change, travel changes, and hostels have had to change with it.
Have you been to a hostel recently? They’re different now. YHA, the classic youth hostel brand, has had a total revamp in Australia in the past few years, so much so that the organisation seriously considered changing its name entirely to get rid of the “youth” bit from Youth Hostels Association.
Reason being, it’s not just youth who stay in hostels now. Last year, almost half of YHA’s guests in its Australian hostels were 30 or older. It’s not so much fun to give the top bunk a workout, I assume, when half your dorm buddies can remember what it was like to travel with folding maps.
I had a wander around the flagship YHA, at the Rocks on Sydney Harbour, a few weeks ago and wow, things are different.
At the front desk you’re not greeted by some hangover-fighting teenager from Sheffield; there’s a trained barista standing behind a coffee machine. You don’t even have to talk to that person if you don’t want to because you can check in online and receive your digital key on your mobile phone, which you just scan at your dorm-room door for access. (Sorry, did I say “dorm room”? They’re called “co-living rooms” now.)
Look around the entry foyer and you see private tables set up as work spaces for digital nomads (I will refrain from making jokes about the only wandering digits back in my day). You see an airy, light-filled cafe serving healthy treats. You see the lifts that whisk guests up to their “co-living rooms” and the increasing number of private rooms with flat-screen TVs and ensuite bathrooms.
The new YHA doesn’t partner with local pubs to offer discount drinks when it brings groups through. Instead it partners with First Nations organisations to help promote education and reconciliation. It has sustainability initiatives in place. It offers its guests “regenerative experiences”, whereby they can volunteer with local organisations to do something that’s actually helpful for the planet.
The organisation is even considering sending guests a report at the end of their stay to show them their personal carbon footprint as a subtle nudge to say – hey, do better.
YHA has read the room(s). You can see it in the way other youth brands have morphed their product too, the likes of Contiki and TopDeck, more formerly hedonistic legends that now talk about stuff like sustainability and responsibility and actually learning a few things in between trips to the pub.
For an old guy like me, this is good news. I’m not going on any more Contiki tours but I’m definitely keen to stay at a hostel. They accept families; in fact they encourage families. You can meet people your own age, you can cook food on site, you can save plenty on accommodation costs, all while avoiding the social impact of the Airbnb accommodation model.
And if you want, you can try to save the world. Which I’m pretty sure no one at the Milhouse was doing.
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