Where would you open a hostel??
 

Hey guys so it has been on my mind for a while to open a hostel/overlander point/moto rentals

Ive traveled a lot of the world on and off a motorcycle but still never found an exact place i think i would settle in.

Any ideas guys? somewhere that is still emerging and not overly touristy yet. and where the bureaucracy wont be too much trouble

Georgia

Too many of those who use hostels are so broke that I couldn't see how anyone would make any money running one.

About a decade ago I spent a couple of years including an extended period of six weeks in the Azrou area of Morocco looking for land to buy to build a biking/4x4 base. Azrou is an area of outstanding natural beauty and one day ride from the entry ports into Morocco. In addition to accommodation of varying quality/costs from bunkhouse to suites I envisaged an outstanding route planning research facility, the chance to drop unwanted gear and pick up on the way back, on-site workshop facility, the offer of locally guided track rides, and even the offer to meet guests off the ferries to escort them to Azrou.

In the end I decided not to proceed. I realised I didn’t really want to oversee a two year building project. And I wasn’t sure whether I could hack being a friendly ‘mine host’ to some of the twerps I was sure to meet.

Azrou whilst nice is fecking cold in the winter which would also have hit my enjoyment.

Ideally you want as close to an all-year round riding area as possible, somewhere with safe property laws, a few expats for company. And inexpensive for buying land, building and taxes.

You and everyone else mate :)

I've got a few places in mind. But there are MASSIVE gambles involved.

If you want to make a living then you HAVE TO follow the tourists. And then is that somewhere you want to be ??

And then expect a lot of hard work, stress and never having a day off. Owning any type of accomodation is a huge commitment.

One thing that has stopped me from opening a biker/traveller hostel is that travellers who I would like to accomodate are usually cheap arses !

They don't want to buy your food, beer or rent an expensive room. They want a cheap place for their tent and they will buy their own beer in town and cook their own food on stoves while making a mess of your kitchen..

Those who are not on a budget will just stay in a nice hotel. And that's not something i'd be interested in.


But to answer your original question. Find the popular routes and stick somewhere on it. But you will have to offer something special/different to stick out and make a good living from it.

Best place like that I've encountered was QT's in Northern Vietnam. They have one of the biggest rental operations in Ha Giang, and a good hostel there in town that caters to not just bike tourists. They also have affiliated hostels all over the Northern Loop, so it's very easy to get essentially a full package from one place. But what they don't do, is cater particularly to people on their own bikes. (You can't bring in a foreign-plated bike into Vietnam for all intents and purposes, but there are plenty of people who buy local bikes to ride around the country.)

I think you have to make a business case for it as a hostel first, and add the biker bits as kind of a hobby. Having a dry garage with a lift and a set of cheap tools and/or a relationship with a local mechanic is not that difficult or expensive to set up. But making the business case of, specifically, a biker stop - that is extremely dependent on a combination of circumstances.

Various people have started from the motorbike end of things, in a whole variety of places: Peter Girling comes to mind in Morocco, as do Mikkel Thomson in Cali, Stefan Knopf in Heidelberg, and of course Javier and Sandra in B.A. I'm sure there are dozens more who I've never met (although of equally sure there are plenty who've tried and failed). There's something about anticipating a growth sector, getting ahead of the curve and contributing to that very growth by your presence on the ground. I don't see it as "following the tourists" so much as arriving a bit before they show up en masse--before prices skyrocket and markets get saturated.

Note that some of the folks I've named above take a fair amount of time off. It's not necessarily all nose-to-the-grindstone, 24/7. It does seem necessary to pour in a lot of blood and sweat (and probably cash), at least in the early days.

Of the suggestions above, Georgia sounds like the most interesting. Too bad the country is so small, and surrounded by so many argumentative neighbors.

I used to have some fancy ideas about setting up hostels in some of the more amazing places I've lived, but I could never get things to pencil out. What's more, I wasn't able to convince myself I'd be happy staying in one place to keep an eye on things, while dealing day-to-day with annoying people, a.k.a. "the public." That works for some, and I'm grateful to them.

In the meantime, I'm sticking to my day job....which continues to pay for expensive habits like surgeries and mountain biking between motorcycle trips.

Mark

You had so much fun in your life. Why do you want to make your life a lot more ... ermm, complicated?


If you decide to go down that road, find a country with a good cheap workforce. Start with either the moto rental or the hostel. Two different kinds of branches will be a lot more demanding than running one kind of a business.



I self employed long enough to say: don´t friggin´ do it. Self employed means self exploited and there is rarely a limit to it.

There is more to it than meets the eye, I worked for two foreign owned and run companies in Nepal. Business visas were incredibly expensive to get, with a lot of bureaucracy, and there is the worry from one year to the next that the government may not grant you one, and you have to pack up shop and go home.

Some people end up marrying a local person so they can stay.. that tends to work. Marrying local in some countries can leave you vulnerable if you split up, as an outsider, divorce can be financially painful.

The Nepali government refused to issue work visas to the hundreds of ex pat tandem paragliding pilots one year, causing many to leave without a means of income,.

Then was the headache of local strikes, especially fuel strikes, you can stockpile petrol for these eventualities, but that is no good when the police come and steal it from you. Revolutions, wars, natural disasters also have to be considered. All part of the adventure I suppose but can you afford to have no customers for several years whilst things blow over?

I would go with Turkey or Ukraine. I would rent the building if possible.

Airbnb might be the better option. With a hostel you would get more personal interaction with your customers, but that is not always a good thing. With a hostel you will have to make sure that you are there or someone you trust is there a lot of the time. There will be more babysitting.

Almaty, Kazakhstan. A fantastic vibrant city and one that is actively developing itself while holding on to its roots as a trading post on the Silk Road. Almaty is a must for anyone passing through the Stans, and is in easy riding range of some jaw-dropping natural wonders. Although the city has a good number of hotels they don't really cater for overlanders on a limited budget who would like to hook up with other travellers. Nothing's simple of course, and Kazakh working visas for foreigners are difficult to get. You'd probably need a local partner, if only to help you with getting premises and dealing with the multi-layered Russian-speaking bureaucracy of everyday life.

The western Cape South Africa in the Cederberg

An Overlander Hostal/Campground or a backpacker hostal?

Overlanders want a safe place free of backpackers so they leave their stuff all out and nothing gets stolen. They are willing to pay more (people with rigs moreso than motorcyclist) and they want a quieter spot with camaraderie of fellow overlanders.

Examples of seemingly successful hostals/campgrounds that cater to overlanders that I visited: Camping La Guadalupe in Northern Peru, Casa Mate in Santiago Chile, Hostal La Puertovista in Valparaiso Chile, Quinta Lala in Cusco Peru.

These are not cheap places to stay at but they provide an experience that is harder recreate and makes them special to overlanders.

And to answer the where part of the question. If it a seasonal hostal I would try to open one that is on the overlanding trail, and is somewhat near one of many checklist bulletpoint items for overlanders so to speak. You also want to be in or near a town that is big enough that people can get mechanical things fixed on their bikes rigs, things can be shipped there, then can get parts to fix their rigs/bikes. etc...

If on the other hand you run a backpacker hostal, then it is all about location, nightlife around the hostal and an enviroment that is tourist friendly for short term travelers. Your clientèle is younger, parties more and is poorer.

Either way it wont be easy and you must be prepared to work a lot to probably even lose money at first.

Already have Cederberg Oasis and many other fine campsites.

I totally agree on picking something on the overlander trail, however I don't think it needs to be in a big town because the most important thing is going to be cheap land and space for workshops (if you want to go that way)

I was shocked at the amount of overlander traffic going through the Silk Road and back so anywhere along that route that ISN'T already dominated by overlander stops would be good. Georgia isn't a bad idea but you're either competing with cheap hostels in the cities or cheap guesthouses in the high country (tusheti, etc). And it's super difficult to get parts for some reason.

I would guess Albania Cheap, friendly people, good parts availability, nice roads (both tarmac and dirt) and you're picking up people doing both the silk route and the balkans loop. There's a bunch of moto-camps in Bulgaria and Romania, but nothing really on the Adriatic Sea side.