Depending on your idea of comfort, or rather, on where your trade-off lies on the cost-benefit curve, there are plenty of alternatives to hotel stay for the low budget traveler. Choosing clean, safe accommodation at reasonable prices can not only save you money and allow you more room for adventure, it can afford you a richer travel experience by bringing you closer to the places you visit.

Full – one might say – excessive service has a cost, and that cost can be extravagant. And further, it may keep you from meeting any locals but the ones who are paid to smile at you. Here is a review of refreshing and enjoyable alternatives to hotel stay.

Hostels

• Hostels can range from a few average-sized rooms in a private home to large hotel-like buildings or even villas fitted with bunk beds and a communal kitchen. The typical hostel sleeps 6 to 8 people per room, most all strangers, but most always of the same gender. Few hostels have co-ed room arrangements, and the ones that do, often sleep at least twice as many people per room. City of broken taboos and unconventional ways, Amsterdam comes to mind. However, it is also quite common these days for hostels to offer single and double bed room stays, for those who enjoy low priced, quaint atmosphere of the hostel, but seek some privacy – or, if on an extended backpacking journey, just a one or two night break from the multi-bed, multi-person sleeping arrangement.

For the longer version on what its like to stay in a hostel, see the article, “You Can Afford to Rethink That Opinion. ” Begin your search for hostel stays with the group, Hostelling International, and the Youth Hostel Association. Keep in mind, however, that hostels are not reserved only for the youth, and have become the choice of adventurous travelers of all ages.

Bed and Breakfasts

• The Bed and Breakfast is one of the oldest forms of travel accommodation. Before there were Inns, designed and set up to receive a regular flow of guests, travelers would spend the night in private homes and share a meal or two with the family that lived there. In many parts of the world, the custom of hosting guest travelers persists, and those who desire more intimate accommodations and an opportunity to get to know the place firsthand through the local people, will choose to a B&B homestay.

Not all B&B’s are low budget. Today, the Bed and Breakfast can also be a smaller but high priced equivalent to a fancy hotel, the difference being that the B&B is set up in an older, renovated, and sometimes historic home and furnished with antiques. A little research will uncover the best homestay experience for your budget. BedandBreakfast.com is a good place to start. The site offers, not only B&Bs, but also a range of other accommodation alternatives, such as lodge and farm stays.

Pensiones

• Although the word is used less and less frequently to refer to travel accommodation in Italy and Spain, a pension is a small, quaint, cheap hotel usually run by one family. Rooms can be rustic, even dilapidated, but can sometimes have quite a lot of personality. Venice, Italy is one place to experience a pension stay, since the building and the room often look as though they have been standing for centuries, and very likely have been.

When choosing pensiones on the spot, you may wish to politely ask for a view of the room. Do use your best judgment, but don’t necessarily turn it down just because the walls appear to crumble as you watch. Of course, not all pensiones are old and rundown. Many are newly renovated, or simply new. In any case, the pleasantness of a pensione stay tends be its small but friendly staff.