How do online hostel reservations really work?
Most of the hostel websites (see below) offer online reservations at hostels, either through their own reservations system or by being an affiliate of another company’s system. The way it works is hostels sign an agreement with one or more of the reservation systems and then set aside some number of their beds to be made available through the reservation system. A hostel might offer anywhere all or just a few of their beds online through a reservation system. Typically they set aside something like 20-50% of the beds for online reservations. That’s important to realize, because what that means is just because a hostel doesn’t have any beds available through the reservations system, that doesn’t mean they don’t still have other beds available. If you’re determined to stay at a particular hostel and there aren’t available beds in the online reservation system, you may want to try contacting the hostel directly. It’s a little more work, but there’s at least some chance that you may be abl
