For the past 8 years, HostelWorld has recognized the top 10 hostels worldwide with the best reviews on its website with the annual Hoscars Awards Ceremony (HOStelworld Customers Annual Ratings). I was invited by HostelWorld to attend this year’s event last week at The Button Factory in Dublin, Ireland. The Hoscars is essentially a big party to honor the hostels that are ranked the highest in a number of categories like Most Improved, Cleanest, and Best Staff in additional to the top 10 overall worldwide.
The Hostel Owners
I was surprised to see how many young hostel owners and staff there were, many of them current or former backpackers themselves. They were very keen on maintaining and improving upon their reputations in their respective categories and the other hostels not on any of the lists were looking toward 2011. The hostel owners and staff take the reviews of their hostels seriously and the Hoscars seem to benefit hostels and hostelers alike.
The Top 10 Hostels Worldwide
I’ll introduce you a bit more to these hostels later in the week, which are overwhelmingly based in Europe. The results were based on over a million user reviews of 23,000 hostels featured on HostelWorld.
- Traveller’s House – Lisbon, Portugal
- Rossio Hostel – Lisbon, Portugal
- Living Lounge Hostel – Lisbon, Portugal
- Academy Hostel – Florence, Italy
- Carpe Noctem – Budapest, Hungary
- The Riverhouse Backpackers – Cardiff, Wales (Also voted best staff. Find out why in this Guardian article by Dixe Wills.)
- Lisbon Lounge Hostel – Lisbon, Portugal
- Greg & Tom Hostel – Krakow, Poland
- The Naughty Squirrel Backpackers Hostel – Riga, Latvia
- Lisboa Central Hostel – Lisbon, Portugal
I would like to have seen hostels representing a wider global reach. While Europe is certainly a very popular area of the world for backpackers, I’m sure there are excellent and unique hostels from other parts of the world that simply didn’t get enough volume of votes.
The HostelWorld Hostel Conference
The Hoscars were only one part of a 2-day HostelWorld hostel conference revolving around how hostel owners can better use social media to engage travelers. The discussions revolved around what travelers want (i.e. booking very last minute and family rooms) and accommodating the newest backpacking nationalities (Brazilians are climbing the list fast).
Hostel Feedback
Often travelers don’t regard hostels as businesses and neglect to leave feedback online or in person during and after their stays. I tried to speak with as many of the 400 hostel owners in attendance as I could and almost all seemed receptive to comments and complaints – but noted that backpackers in general don’t make their concerns known immediately.
That the top hostels are recognized both globally and locally by events like the HostelWorld Hoscars pushes the receptive hostel industry in the right direction, opens up budget travel to more people, and improves it for current backpackers.
There are five in Portugal so they must actively get people to review their hostels. It is refreshing to see such young business owners as running a hostel must be tough work.
From what everyone told me, running a hostel is *a lot* of work and generally for not much profit.
Dude I have to agree, there are a lot of hostels in the world and if only Europe is represented then this is nothing but hype and bullshit. What a waste of time and sounds like this is an inside vote job.
Call me crazy but Portugal of all places to have 5 of the top 10 places… does that not sound strange in the slightest? Asia doesn’t have one good hostel, Latin America… even Australia??? Please! This seriously makes me think less of Hostel World (which makes me sad because I like their site for booking).
Am I wrong for thinking this? I mean it should be called “Portugal’s Greatest Hostels” and not the “Hoscars Award.”
I think it just comes down to the volume of votes. Europe has an advantage by getting more travelers than other parts of the world and I’m certain the owners of these hostels mention to their customers to leave (good) reviews. I don’t suspect that the voting itself is manipulated (I really hope not).
The Hoscars does also feature a lot of hostels in local categories, and some others like most secure, etc. which were better represented globally. It is a promotional tool but in the end seems to encourage the hostel owners and industry to improve and ask for feedback.
Apparently I need to get to Portugal! I like the fact that they used the time to talk about social media and how it can be used. Great! I agree though – I wish that some other parts of the world were represented in the awards.
Out of curiosity were there people from other parts of the world there (of course I’m interested in Asia) attending and also learning from the social media talks?
There was a wide variety of hostel staff and owners from most countries around the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if some South American and Asian hostels popped up in the top 10 next year.
There seemed to be a wide gap between the hostels that were fully immersed in social media and those that were very behind. Personally I see a lot of potential in the hostel industry particularly as hotels try to come down into their price range and market.
Sounds like a fun and interesting event to attend. I haven’t heard about any of the top hostels before and was rather surprised that so many of them were located in Lisbon.
As for feedback, I think most backpackers are pretty carefree and don’t expect the same kind of standards as a hotel guest may do.
Lots of backpackers, particularly the younger ones do hold back. I’m one of them (although I’m not really young) – maybe it’s better to speak up a little bit 🙂
Sounds like a cool event. And damn Portugal, get down with all your top hostels.
It was a lot of fun and the Portuguese did get down! They *really* know how to party 🙂
Really pretty hard to believe that most of the top ten hostels in the world are in Portugal. As you say, it all comes down to votes, but I’ve stayed at some fabulous hostels all over the world.
Same here – the most memorable hostels pop up in the most unexpected places.
I’m also a bit suspicious about all of those in Lisbon, perhaps they just have great marketing. Worthdoing a hostel tour of lisbon though.
I seriously considered it and still thinking about it although I’ll be headed to the Balkans. If I can get to Lisbon though in this time around in Europe, I’m going to try and stay a day or two in each.
I met my boyfriend <3 at #9! What a great hostel! 🙂 🙂