How hostels stay ahead
After 15+ years of working with hostels, one pattern keeps showing up. The owners and managers who invest in staying ahead, in themselves, their team and their systems, keep winning. And the ones who put their efforts into industry connection and collaborations see exponential returns!
Why are hostels so often late to the adoption curve?
When social media took off, many hostels chose to ignore it. It felt like a distraction from running the place. Try running a full hostel without it today.
Websites went the same way. Plenty of hostels ignored websites or put up a basic page and forgot about it, happy to let the booking sites do the work. Now its a constant fight for every booking, and the website is where that fight is often won or lost.
Then came revenue management. Hotels had made it standard years earlier, while many hostels pushed back. And some still do. At the Hostelworld Conference 2026 in Naples, the discussion group on revenue gave a rough picture of where hostels are now. Only about 10 to 15% of the hostels there had a clear pricing strategy. Around 40% were working from spreadsheets and rules of thumb. The rest mostly looked at last year and went with their gut.
Is AI the next one?
It seems to be heading that way. AI is already part of daily life for our guests and our teams, and I still see a lot of hostels holding back.
Some of the worries are real. Nobody wants a hostel that feels like a vending machine, and the human touch is the whole point of what we do. But holding back won't protect it. Learning to use AI well can.
At our Hostel Connect event in Shkodër, I ran a workshop where each hostel built its own AI assistant. We started by talking through the resistance, and by the end it had turned into clarity and real adoption. A week later in Naples, the hostels using AI well said the same thing: they hand it the repetitive questions and the admin work while they put the time it frees back into their guests. Their WhatsApp bots didn't empty the reception desk and guests kept coming for a chat and real local tips. Used well, AI moves a hostel forward and leaves more room for the conversations guests remember.
What does staying ahead look like in practice?
My longest-running client is the best example I know. When @Benedita Vasconcellos, the owner of Goodmorning Solo Traveller Hostel in Lisbon, first got in touch, she couldn't say exactly what she was looking for. She only knew she needed something to stay ahead.
Since then we've worked on almost every part of her business: operations, revenue, leadership and the team. But the habit that matters most is that we never stop looking ahead, at what's changing in the industry and how to get ready before it arrives. Benedita is endlessly curious. She's one of the few owners I know taking courses on AI, and she's always looking for new ways to put it to work.
And it shows in the results! Goodmorning has been named one of Portugal's Top 5% Best SMEs, a ranking based on financial performance, three years in a row and four of the last five. That's measured against small and medium businesses across every industry in the country, not only hostels.
Her manager @Bruno Portocarrero works the same way. He's one of the most active members of HostelLife Hub, and he even helped write our Hostel Operations course.
What Benedita does is what I see in every hostel that stays ahead:
They invest before they're forced to. Time, money and attention, in their team, their tools and their own learning.
They test small. One change, one season. Measure it, keep what works, drop what doesn't.
They don't do it alone.
Why does community make the difference?
Naples showed this better than anything I could write. More than 100 hostel owners and managers sat at ten tables, each on one part of running a hostel (Bruno hosted the one on staff and leadership). People shared their worries openly, and then answered each other's.
Every hostel at those tables was different: different market, different vibe, different vision, different structure. Yet at every table, someone had an "aha, this could work for me" moment. A "code" drink to order at the bar that lets a guest ask for help without a scene. A way to fill quiet dates without slashing prices. A different way to run breakfast that helps turn strangers into friends.
Some of the best moments came from people who disagreed. Put like-minded people and opposing views in the same room, and you get to test your thinking against people who have lived it.
That's exactly why we created HostelLife Hub. So our hostel people can connect, collaborate and thrive together all year, and not only once a year at a conference. We're stronger together, and hostels have always moved forward that way.
Where do you start?
Staying ahead takes investment. Sometimes that's outside help: a course, a coach or a consultant, the way Benedita started. More often it's an hour a week with peers working on the same problems you are. Either way, the hostels that make that investment keep moving forward, and they bring others with them.
If you're planning to open a hostel, or you want to take the one you run to the next level, start where the hostels in Naples did: in the room, with each other. And if you're already part of HostelLife Hub, you're in that room. We're so glad you're here.
Speaking of “stronger together”…
See what all ten tables shared with each other in Naples:
👉 What 100+ hostel operators shared at the Hostelworld Conference 2026