Weak dollar sends American Travelers to European hostels

[Hostels]

Interesting AP article about hostels in USA Today:

Annie Worth, a 21-year-old from Orinda, Calif., said she and her friends were used to staying in nice hotels with their parents on vacation but had chosen to stay in no-frill hostels during an 11-country backpacking trip through Europe.
...
Hostels are not always ridiculously cheap. Most single beds in dormitory rooms cost between $31 and $47 a night and can climb as high as $78 for a dorm-room stay in tourist hotspot Amsterdam.

Heather Barrett, 21 from California: hostels "can be surprisingly expensive for the quality, so I suppose the image of the cheap backpackers' hostel is rapidly disappearing."

[Ria]

guess she wasn't figuring in that the dollar is c*(p overseas? Or maybe she doesn't book ahead?

[hostelblog.de]

Well, since reading this I am a bit confused, should a weak dollar not attract more travellers to the Americas instead of Americans travelling to the EU with a stronger Euro?
Maybe I am wrong...................

Kind regards from
Chris

[Ria]

Chris you are absolutely right! The three California hostels i manage are having their best year yet... and because the dollar is so weak, we've raised our prices repeatedly this year and they still keep coming.

The great exchange rate, coupled with the fact that the countries these people are coming from are more expensive than the USA already, still makes a hostel dorm room an attractive price, even when charging $35.

Conversely, i think the point of the article was that Americans are going to hostels more now because hotels are so expensive there. The point of my comment was that these same travelers probably don't have hostelling experience and don't remember the days with the dollar ruled and you could get a dorm room for about $10 US a night....so with the dollar so weak, they think they are spending so much on a dorm bed, when in reality the prices of the beds in Europe haven't really gone up that much, it's just that our conversion rate just makes it seems so.

Frankly, i don't know why any American would go to western Europe right now. Now is the time to explore eastern Europe, or better yet, the cheaper Asian countries like Cambodia (amazing people and sites), Laos or the good old standby, Thailand.

[Hostels]

This AP story is still making the rounds. Here it is in the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...trsleep14.html

I was rereading the article and it says: "With prices as low as $31 in some of Europe's most expensive cities..."

I just did a search of London hostels for August 24th and found 15 hostels with dorm beds under $30 USD. The cheapest London hostel dorm bed was $17.57.

Then I searched Dublin for the same night. The cheapest hostel was $14.07 and there were a total of 15 hostels under $30.

Barcelona dorm beds started at $18.95.

Paris had fewer options -- the cheapest dorm was $28.13 -- but that is an exception, and budget travelers can still visit expensive European cities at much less than $31 per night.

[Ria]

Yeah, but what do you get for that money? I've stayed in a few london hostels and anything cheap was always a hole. I think it's rare to find a decent place in those areas of europe that cheap. And it's not worth getting bed bugs to save a few $$$.

But i get your point. But American media jump on something and run with it...even if they don't always check the facts. And i say this as person who formerly worked in journalism.