What the most unusual hostels in the world look like. Names for the hostel. How to call the Best Hostels in the World

A hostel with a homely feel: there are many little things brought from home by the owners and guests. The hostel's hostesses host dinner parties, communicate with guests, and play the antique piano. The title “Falling in Love” reflects the idea of ​​falling in love with a city and the state in which you want to do something good and beautiful.

Guest house "Taiga House" 0+

“Taiga” has been conquering the ratings for several years best hostels Petersburg and wins prestigious awards. Guests have at their disposal modern amenities and entertainment - an iMac computer, a Dandy console, high-speed Internet access wi-fi networks, free parking in a closed courtyard. The cozy rooms are decorated in Scandinavian style with shabby chic and boho elements. For a comfortable stay of guests, they are equipped with air conditioning, TVs and pleasant household amenities. Entrance to the rooms is carried out using magnetic cards.

Distinctive features of Soul kitchen (“Soul Kitchen”) - large number private rooms for two, original design of rooms and furniture. For example, all beds have curtains and each guest has their own shelf, lamp and socket. There are guest MacBooks. In 2014, the Soul Kitchen hostel received four awards from a renowned hostel booking site. Soul Kitchen turned out to be the best among small establishments, the first hostel in Europe and Russia, and also distinguished itself with the highest level of security.

Hostel network Friends (“Friends”)

The hostel is named after the cult American TV series, and the atmosphere here is appropriate: colorful rooms with 90s-style interiors, “Friends” is constantly shown in the lobby and games of kicker are played. Today there are about ten addresses in the Friends network.

"Culture" is a meeting place for creative travelers. In addition to the extraordinary composition of guests, the hostel is distinguished by the presence of double rooms (there are also traditional dorms) and an unusual approach to design.

Baby Lemonade Hostel combines the modern amenities of civilization with the style of the 60s: hippie aesthetics, vinyl records and Volkswagen buses in various interpretations. There is a house called Yellow Submarine and a VW Classical Bus. On Saturdays they play mafia, and every evening they cook something special from national dishes all over the world.

Amendments to the Housing Code, known as « ”, has not yet been accepted, and the St. Petersburg establishments have already begun to have problems. So, in mid-February the court ordered to close the St. Petersburg hostel « Friends" on Nevsky Prospekt: ​​residents of the building had previously complained about him. Before this, a similar story happened with the Bagel hostel on Saperny Lane.

Over the past 10 years, St. Petersburg has become one of the world capitals of hostels. Almost all of them are located in residential buildings(often in settled communal apartments) and are automatically subject to the prohibition law if it is adopted without amendments.

The most famous St. Petersburg hostel is Soul Kitchen in the Lipin apartment building built in 1863 on the Moika embankment. The young married couple Lyubov and Sergey Sorokin opened it in 2012 after the project of the same name on the 1st Sovetskaya street. This year, Soul Kitchen once again received the most prestigious industry award Hoscar from the Hostelworld website, and in five categories at once, including « the best small hostel in the world." And recently the hostel also received the Russian Hospitality Award as « the best designer hotel."

In October 2016, The Guardian included St. Petersburg residents among the top ten European luxury hostels. In January of this year, The Huffington Post included them in the list of 12 « amazing hostels that every traveler should try.”

Soul Kitchen is located in a former communal apartment (the Sorokins rent premises from the owner, who bought the rooms and initially rented them out for filming such TV series as « The Master and Margarita"). In the front door there are both communal apartments and ordinary apartments. One of the hostel’s neighbors, Irina, told The Village: « When we moved here, the hostel already existed, and at first this was a minus for me. But then I realized that neighborhood brings only positive things. The hostel is a guarantee of order and cleanliness. There were never any incidents. We talked about this topic with our neighbors: everyone had only a positive opinion. “I am sure that the bill on hostels is not aimed at the benefit of small and medium-sized businesses, which are the basis of the economy of any civilized country, nor at the benefit of the ordinary consumer.”

We talked with Lyubov and Sergey about whether there are advantages to « the law banning hostels”, about the difference between St. Petersburg hostels and Moscow ones, and also about how they managed to please their neighbors on the front door.

About the communal apartment

Love: There used to be a communal apartment here. About five years before we found out about her, she was moved out, and all this time the apartment was empty. Once it was even squatted by migrant workers - they were kicked out... The premises looked terrible.

The last room had an artificial thin wall; it was made to reduce the rent (payment was per square meter). We found a window bricked up with bricks - we removed the bricks and found newspapers from the 1920s (The owners framed a fragment of one such newspaper and hung it on the wall in the hostel. – Ed.). The windows had very beautiful long brass shutters. It would be difficult to install them on plastic windows, but we, of course, saved them. By the way, the valves, together with the stucco molding, are under state protection as a cultural value.

We even save strange objects that are not under protection. For example, there was a piece of wood, it was more than 150 years old. There were holes in it: apparently so that the wood would not lose its shape. Seryozha inserted light bulbs into the holes - it turned out very cool. The tables at the reception and in the computer room are made from old doors that they decided not to throw away during the renovation. They are as old as the house, some even have their original paint on them, as they were preserved under layers of wallpaper. They saved a piece of the tap: an awkward thing, but it was the same in the Hermitage - lead pipes are connected to brass (when the repairs began, water flowed through one such lead pipe - I can’t imagine how people used it).

About neighbors

Love: When we moved here, the front entrance looked different: a classic Soviet staircase, walls painted a terrible blue color. Above us, on the third floor, there were two communal apartments. Then one of them was bought, and in 2014, together with a new neighbor, we renovated the front door. The total investment was 1.2 million rubles, and we shared the costs equally.

If something is scratched in the front door or someone paints the front door, we will immediately clean it and repaint it. We believe that we should be involved in everything that is around the hostel. Now we are thinking about making a small stained glass window on the landing.

Sergey: There is an apartment for rent here on the ground floor. We are on the second one. On the third, right above us, there is a communal apartment, and on the other side live the German Consul for Culture and his wife. On the fourth floor there is another communal apartment and an apartment.

Love: We often meet one of the neighbors from the fourth floor on the stairs. One day he said: “Oh, I heard about the law (about hostels in residential buildings. - Ed.), don’t worry, I support you.” It's nice.

About guests and employees

Love: Soul Kitchen is partly our projection. The hostel attracts people like us. Those who do not understand us will not come here. For example, our guests are not very happy with groups of schoolchildren running and screaming. We are a family hostel, but we will not accommodate school groups at any cost.

Sergey: In addition, regulation occurs at the price level: we are more expensive than any hostel in St. Petersburg (and in Moscow we know only one very expensive hostel). People come because they want to come to us. You can live in a hostel for 250−500 rubles, but here it’s 900. In summer, prices are even higher - 1,300−2,000 rubles per bed (competitors have 1,500 on peak dates).

Love: I read about people who changed their apartment to a hostel, and it seems to me that this is a terrible phenomenon. Yes, this really happens. Perhaps such long-livers contributed to the emergence of a bill banning hostels in residential buildings. When people live in a hostel for a long time, they start to feel too much at home. We realized this a long time ago, and we have a limit - a maximum of two weeks (although sometimes we make exceptions). We are a hostel for travelers. Those coming to St. Petersburg to work or study long term- not our ideal guests.

Sergey: We employ about eight people. Salaries are higher than the industry average. We are currently recruiting new people. We try to look for friends and friends of friends, we take people from our circle. We definitely won’t write an ad on HeadHunter.

Love: By the way, taking this opportunity: we want to find a person who speaks English and Korean. We have many guests from Korea, some of them have problems with English. In general, Asia is now growing in the overall tourist flow. Chinese guests go mainly to cheap hotels, and our number 1 Asian guest is South Korea.

About Hostelworld

Love: Hostelworld has its own algorithms according to which they calculate the Hoscar award winners. I think there are many factors there, not just a high rating (you can have a 9.9 rating based on just two reviews).

When a guest leaves the hostel, they receive an email from Hostelworld and can leave a review. First, he gives a score from one to five on several parameters: atmosphere, cleanliness, staff, amenities, price-quality ratio, location. Then he writes a comment. There should be a lot of reviews, they should all be real.

New hostels often have fake reviews at first. Hostelworld has an algorithm that allows you to detect fakes. In addition, sooner or later a review from a real guest appears, which puts everything in its place. So there is no point in fake reviews.

Over the entire history of our hostel on Moika, about 1,300 reviews of Soul Kitchen have appeared on Hostelworld. We have a rating of 9.9 - this is higher than anyone else in the world (if you do not take into account properties with a small number of reviews).

Every year Hostelworld organizes a conference, attracting about 300 delegates. We communicate with the site staff, but, of course, not on the subject of “introduce the right person to receive the award.” They help with the technical aspects.

About consulting

Sergey: We launched Soul Kitchen Consulting, but we do not consult very actively and certainly not to make money. We did this to meet new people. interesting people. We charge 7 thousand rubles for an hour of Skype consultation. The cost of assistance in drawing up a business plan or competitor analysis is discussed separately. If we really like the project, we are ready to help with free advice.

Mostly people from Russia come to us. The questions are varied: from what resources to post on, to help with planning. The managers of one Samara hostel asked what innovations could be introduced. One of the first clients, a girl from Ecuador, was interested in what points to pay attention to in order to increase her rating.

Love: WITH legal point From a perspective, opening a hostel is not difficult. The question is how it will work. There are a huge number of hostels in St. Petersburg and Moscow; there is nothing like this even in Europe. There are 360 ​​hostels in St. Petersburg only on Booking.com, and in Moscow there are even more. Colleagues from Europe often ask: “How can you compete in such conditions?” But we have big country, a huge number of local residents travel around Russia.

At the same time, a huge number of hostels are closed or resold, because not everything is so simple. Many people have this approach: put up beds and that’s it, it’s done. Every low season, about 20 new hostels open, they dump, and then close.

About the bill

Sergey: In theory, all St. Petersburg hostels can fall under the new law. And the main problem: like many laws in Russia, it can be interpreted in any way. There is no law yet, but some authorities are already beginning to understand that under this sauce they can close everyone down. The mechanism began to spin.

Love: After the first reading of the bill, the need to make amendments was discussed. They, in particular, would allow the placement of hostels in residential buildings, provided that the neighbors do not mind. Here, however, the question arises: how to formalize the consent of neighbors? Overall, we hope that common sense will prevail. We don't want to fear for our future. Uncertainty hinders development.

Sergey: Moreover, we plan to open a new wing before the start of the high season. There will be eight more rooms for 36 people - about 200 square meters. There used to be a communal apartment there too, but it was moved out last summer. We are currently doing renovations.

But in general, the entire industry is now slowing down: no one wants to invest money in something that can be taken away. On the other hand, this law can clear the market of unscrupulous players. But the same mandatory classification of accommodation facilities, which not everyone has passed, already performs this function (accommodation facilities that have not passed the classification since January 1, 2017 cannot operate, there is a law). It would be possible to write a bill based on the classification and register of approved hostels, but so far no one wants to do this.

Love: In this whole story, it’s not clear what to do with the World Cup (2018 FIFA World Cup - Ed.). St. Petersburg consisted of a huge number of communal apartments, and now the bulk of the number of rooms in the center are small hotels and hostels. If everything is closed, there won't be enough room for guests. This is easier in Moscow: there are more large hotels there. We don't have that.

About Moscow hostels

Sergey: Colleagues from Moscow said that last year inspection structures came to their hostel and said: “You don’t have a sign banning smoking.” - "How?! Here she is." - “This sign was made according to a different GOST - that’s it, close up.” We still have little flowers, in Moscow everything is much tougher: it feels like the city government gave the unspoken go-ahead to close hostels.

Looking for a place to stay for the night? Forget about the usual selection criteria! New hostels have so much more to offer - from sleep pods to galleries contemporary art. I have collected the five most interesting hostels in the capital.

1. Molotoff Capsule Hotel

Address: Tverskaya, building 7

Cost: from 1190 rubles per night

What's unusual? Instead of beds there are capsules for sleeping, like in Japan. Moreover, the hostel is located in the Central Telegraph building - in the very center of Moscow, 300 meters from Red Square and the Kremlin. Ideal option For business people, as well as for lovers of novelty and technology. In addition to capsules with lockers for storing things, there is a co-working space, areas for lunch and relaxation.

2. High Level Hostel

Address: Presnenskaya embankment, building 6, building 2

Cost: from 1000 rubles per day

What's unusual? 43rd floor! There is a legend about a girl who did not leave Moscow City for a year. But first, let's try to spend at least a weekend there. There is also a hostel in the Empire Tower of the Moscow City business complex. This is the only skyscraper hostel in the world. It’s worth coming here if only for a selfie in the panoramic window overlooking Moscow. And there is a lot of entertainment nearby: restaurants, open bars, cinemas, etc., etc.

3. Gindza Hostel

Address: Bolshoi Sergievsky Lane, building 24, building 6

Cost: from 750 rubles per knock

What's unusual? Decoration in Provence style and attic. Pleasant peach and lavender tones. In multi-bed rooms, each bed has its own curtain so that guests can hide from prying eyes. There are also double rooms for couples with a king size bed. In these rooms you can lie and watch the starry sky all night. Isn't it wonderful?

4.Godzillas Hostel

Address: Bolshoi Karetny Lane, building 6

Cost: from $12

What's unusual? The hostel is located on three floors and attracts guests with an unusual design: the walls in the rooms are painted with graffiti and drawings of the main guest - Godzilla. The hostel is owned by an American, so you can speak fluent English with all the staff.

5. Hostel Fabrika

Address: per. Bersenevsky, 5, building 3

Cost: from 500 to 3000 rubles

What's unusual? This hostel is also a contemporary art gallery. That is, you come not only to live and change your surroundings, but also to look at the works of artists. All the paintings were donated to the hostel by artists who once stayed here. And the hostel itself can be called an object of modern art! Exhibitions, creative meetings, and lectures are held here. It won't be boring!

Text / Anastasia Konorova / Natasha Angashanova /

People stay in hostels not only for the sake of saving money. Yes, it’s cheap, but often for a nominal 400-600 RUB per night you get not only a bed, but also an original interior, cheerful company, warm service, parties and discounts on excursions and cocktails in the bar next door. There are many of these in St. Petersburg, because they are also used local residents Same. We have selected 8 of the most interesting hostels where you can spend the night during your trip. Well, or if the bridges were opened very inopportunely.

Hostel "Taiga"

“Taiga” has received awards more than once and topped the ratings of the best hostels in the country. The hostel is decorated in the style of Scandinavian minimalism, in addition to standard amenities (air conditioning, Wi-Fi, cleaning, etc.), guests are offered bicycles for rent, free table tennis, an iMac for common use and a Dandy console.

Taiga is not only a hostel, but also a popular hipster place with co-working space, shops, cafes and exhibition spaces. So guests can attend all the events taking place here, as well as receive a discount at a nearby bar or restaurant.

Address: Zagorodny pr., 21-23. Cost: from 340 RUB per day per person.

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Art-hostel "Culture"

This hostel is part of the Fligel entertainment space. There are many different creative startups on its territory: an architectural bureau, a vinyl record store, culinary schools and educational projects. And also a hostel. The atmosphere and audience are appropriate: everything is stylish and creative, environmentally friendly. The rooms are very bright, and there are eight shared bathrooms, so there is enough for everyone.

Address: st. Uprising, 24/27B. Cost: from 400 RUB per person.

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Capsule hostel Your Space

A suitable option for those who are late for the bridges and/or just want to sleep in silence. The capsule hostel is located in the city center, in the Golitsyn Loft art cluster and a stone's throw from the Summer Garden and the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. There is nothing superfluous here, the rooms are small, and the furnishings are as functional as possible: there is a bed with an orthopedic mattress, soundproofing, free Wi-Fi and a shower with hot water. If you want to socialize, you can go to the lounge area, where guests often watch movies together. The main thing is to agree on what language to include the film in: the company is usually international.

Address: emb. Fontanka, 20. Cost: from 550 RUB per person per day.

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Hostel "Fall in Love"

The hostel with the romantic name “Falling in Love” fully lives up to its name. At least here you can fall in love with St. Petersburg. This is a small - with only 5 rooms - mini-hotel next to the Moskovsky railway station. The owners of the hostel are very careful about maintaining a homely atmosphere, so they treat guests here to cookies, arrange dinners for everyone in the evenings, play the old piano themselves and let everyone play. Important nuance: By prior arrangement, you can come with a cat or other animal.

Address: st. Marata, 61. Cost: from 1980 RUB per room.

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Baby Lemonade Hostel

This hostel is the epitome of hippie 60s aesthetics. Here you will find unexpected interior solutions: for example, vinyl records and Volkswagen buses in the form of a chandelier. The atmosphere is also from that era - freedom and intimacy. In the evenings, everyone dine together and play “Mafia,” and since the guests are usually multinational, some exotic dish is prepared here every evening. The owners, in turn, love to treat their guests to pancakes and borscht. A special bonus: discounts on shots at Apron, Folks Bar and Terminal, as well as a map of the best drinking establishments in the city.

Address: st. Inzhenernaya, 7. Cost: from 350 RUB per day per person.

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Hostel chain "Friends"

The Friends hostel chain is named after the cult American TV series from the 90s and is designed in the style of Central Perk, where your favorite characters met every day. The interior is decorated in the fashion of the 90s: everything is bright and acidic, but at the same time cozy. In the courtyard of the hostel on the Griboyedov Canal, a pink “beetle” with cardboard characters from the series inside was parked for a long time, which greatly amused St. Petersburg residents and guests of the city.

In total, there are about 10 hostels of this network in St. Petersburg, in each of them they play a TV series non-stop in the lobby (guess which one), play kicker and throw parties.

Address: emb. Griboyedov Canal, 20, etc. Cost: from 300 RUB. per person.

Do you like everything unusual? Voila! Especially for you, we have collected the most unusual hostels and hotels in the world in our rating:

If you're anything like us, stairs and elevators probably bore you too. And I would really like to fly from floor to floor on a slide, admit it, have you thought about this? Then this place is just for you. The Container Hostel in Malaysia has its own slide! And by the way, the interior of the hostel is not only remarkable for this!

Dreaming of a night together under the open starry sky? Even better: the view from a glass igloo northern lights polar sky. The Finnish family hotel offers not only unusual numbers, but also the largest smoke sauna in the world. Even children's hearts have a reason to shine because Santa Claus lives here in his large festival house that can accommodate up to 250 people. The highlight here is the nature of Lapland, not far from National Park Finland.

Traveling the world is a wonderful and cultivating experience, but it should also be incredibly fun! Hub New Lisbon knows this and that's why they decided to build an adult amusement park in the middle of the hostel! The hostel is large enough and ready to accept all “not matured” adults

Someone probably loves dogs too much. Artists Dennis and Francis from Idaho are the owners of a chain of hostels, but this time they decided to come up with something special for their guests. A large beagle waves its tail in a friendly manner in the middle public park. Through the main entrance you can access the sleeping area and the first floor, a relaxation room with a double bed and small sculptures of dogs made of wood on the walls. The artists paid attention to every detail, there are even dog-shaped cookies instead of simple chocolate bars.

All that glitters is not gold. Silver can also shine. 500 meters underground, the Sala Silver Mine in Sweden is the deepest hotel in the world. Mining of silver ore ceased in the 18th century, after which it was decided to turn the mines into a hotel. The cave rooms are entirely furnished in silver, and the temperature in the hotels is still reminiscent of the mines: around -18°C.

Railway Square YHA, Sydney, Australia
At Railway Square YHA you have the opportunity to spend the night in a converted train carriage! The main building has, of course, cozy rooms and the usual amenities for conservatives.