“As a solo woman traveller, I feel it’s best for me to stay in hostels.
Some women also feel safer staying in community spaces when they are travelling alone. That way I save a lot of money and take up more trips in a year,” he said. “I mostly travel solo or with my friends, and hostels are the best to stay in. Siddhartha Bhardwaj, a 24-year-old who works in Bengaluru, said that he has preferred to stay in hostels for years.
Hostels as a concept appeal to many young people who are looking to not just save money but make friends while travelling. Unlike tourism companies that work as aggregators and let the owners run the hostel or homestay, goSTOPS oversees the management of its properties with the help of local staff.
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The company acquires hotels and homes and then converts them into hostels with dormitories and common areas, which usually feature a TV area, a cafe, gaming zone, and workspace. Just that in India, it could never grow and that’s what we are focusing on,” she said. “What we are doing is nothing new, it’s something that’s already being done globally. Young travellers bond over a bonfire at a goSTOPS hostel in Nainital | By special arrangementĪ trip to Europe in 2011 gave Agarwal the idea of promoting hostel culture in India. Unlike a traditional hotel, a backpacker hostel focuses on community living, with dormitories and common spaces where people can interact with each other over boardgames, bonfires, and suchlike, depending on the destination and season. The younger population’s interest in travel presents a huge opportunity to transform the travel industry in India, Agarwal believes.Īfter opening their first hostel in Varanasi, goSTOPS has set up hostels at over 30 destinations in India and claims to have hosted over 500,000 travellers so far. Fear of Covid did not figure high on the list of zeal-dampeners, but changing border regulations, high costs, and quarantine did.Īlso Read: Why you must travel to Arunachal before tourism growth makes it another Manali or Mussoorie At the time of the survey, as many as 56 per cent of respondents were planning a trip.ĭomestic destinations were high on people’s travel wishlists, and there was reportedly a “spike” in the share of people (32 per cent) wanting to try homestays and “unique” accommodations.įurther, ’s new ‘APAC travel confidence index’, which polled 11,000 people from 11 countries earlier this year, found that Indians were the most confident travellers in the Asia-Pacific region, but with a preference for domestic trips. Since it was founded, the company says it has managed to raise $4 million from micro funds and angel investors.Ī few surveys have drawn attention to Indians’ desire to travel as well as their preferences for easy and affordable trips.įor instance, an October 2021 survey of 1,400 smartphone users by the lockscreen content firm Glance found that Indians in the 18-30 age group are the most eager to travel. But there are 370 million youngsters to cater to in India - the opportunity to grow backpacker hostels is huge,” Agarwal said in an interaction with ThePrint. “There were nearly 700 hostels in India pre-pandemic and the number has gone down to 400 now.
While Covid lockdowns dealt a blow to the hospitality industry, including hostels, the future is bright, according to goSTOPS co-founder and CEO Pallavi Agarwal. The brand’s properties range from a smart townhouse in Jaipur, to a stately (ish) old building in Alleppey, to a hillside cottage in Leh, among many others. A hostel room with a view in Manali, Himachal Pradesh | By special arrangement They also generally have private rooms on offer. With prices starting at about Rs 500 a night, and with dorms housed in well-kept buildings with colourful décor (think murals and funky throw cushions), these hostels are more ‘flashpacker’ than ‘backpacker’. The backpacker hostel brand goSTOPS, which has been around since 2014, is gearing up to expand from 2,500 beds in 32 hostels currently, to 10,000 beds in 100 hostels by June next year, with an eye on Gen-Z travellers - people ranging in age from 18 to 30. The signs have been encouraging enough for one travel start-up to lay its bets on India’s nascent ‘backpacker culture’ - leisure travel characterised by shoestring budgets and dorm stays. They are keen to explore domestic destinations.
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