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Hello friends and travelers. Thanks for listening. You are riding along on the Hostile Road Trip podcast. Our mission is to spread awareness of the true hostile experience in the Americas and share stories from the fascinating hosts who create those unique facilities.

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I'm your host Jimmy Black, joined alongside co-founder of International Travelers House, Bobby Dyer, and Eric Ferria, co-founder of World Packers.

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Each session we sit down with hostile operators or travel influencers to hear about their road success, discuss trending hostile topics, and close with tips for travelers who are seeking to have the ultimate experience when visiting each destination.

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You can't afford to miss this trip. Now fasten your seatbelts and let's hit the road.

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Welcome back to Hostile Road Trip. We are so happy to be here in Portland, Maine at the Black Elephant Hostel with founder, spiritual advisor, creator, Ms. Heather Loeber.

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Ms. Heather Loeber, happy to be here. Yes. Thank you for coming. So good to see you guys stop by. It's awesome to see you.

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Thank you so much. I'm also joined once again by co-founder, Eric Ferria from World Packers. Thank you. So good to be here. It's amazing to see this house. So congratulations. Thank you very much. So good.

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And Robert Dyer, co-founder of ITH Hostels. Great to be here. Thanks for having us, Heather. Yeah, absolutely.

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So let's dive into it. And we are just so excited to this episode because it's the first ever hostel in Portland, Maine. It is brand new. We stayed here last night. What an amazing sleep we had from the road. Thank you so much.

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And one of our thoughts last night was how are we going to fit everything in on this episode because this could be a two part special. It's so nice in here. And we want to talk about the journey of your hostel as well as the journey of Heather. Oh, gosh. How you got here. I'm still getting there.

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Yeah, I know. Well, it's a work of art progress, but it's beautiful right now. We like what's on the canvas. Awesome. Now, to start, the black elephant. How did you come up with the name? The name is actually a personal joke.

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There is a very exclusive resort on Nantucket Island. It's called the White Elephant. And it is run by some family friends, actually, but it's extremely exclusive. They literally serve you Haagen Dazs by the pool. And when I bought this building, I looked at my husband and I said, this is not going to be the White Elephant.

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And he said, no, this is going to be the Black Elephant. So that's why. But there are all these other meanings with Black Elephant. You know, it's like a cross between a white elephant and the black swan. And, you know, some of them are kind of negative. It's like it's like something that everybody knows is there, but doesn't think you don't want to discuss it, which I thought about also like a good example is global warming.

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Yes. Nobody wants to talk about it. Some people are pretending it doesn't exist. And actually, I thought about it with our name because we are hostile. And a lot of people are like, oh, no, hostile. And, you know, and it's like, oh, yes, that is the elephant in the room.

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Oh, yes, a hostile. I like that. Outstanding. So not only does it have a cool meaning to it, I actually just like the rhythm and the rhyme of the name. It sounds cool. So that's it. Now, a little bit about your journey. We met you at the hostile conference last year in South Carolina. And it was so cool to see that in that moment, it was not yet open. It was still a work in progress, a dream in motion.

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And now here we are sitting in this beautiful final product, which makes me so proud of you. So happy for you. But where did this journey start for you? How did you first get into hostile?

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Well, you know, in my early, actually, I think I was 18. And the first hostile I ever stayed at is I hitchhiked to Bar Harbor, Maine. And I stayed in a hostile there. I think it was like a YMCA run one. No longer exists, which is sad. I think they closed about six years ago. But that was when I first discovered hostels. And then I did study abroad and I did some traveling.

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I have not hostile this extensively as a lot of my guests, because I did hunker down and have a family young. So what I have been doing is raising my children for the last 20 years. But yeah, so I did. I did all that. I've been actually living on a farm. I've raised a lot of animals from dairy goats. I've raised everything you can imagine.

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And I feel like you only live once. And there are a lot of different lives I could see myself living. And I was just ready to like try something completely different. And I moved to Portland. And I've always wanted when I think about like, what do I want to do? How can I contribute? And I've wanted to open a hostile before, but I've never lived anywhere that needed one or anywhere that anyone would visit.

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And when I moved here, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I can't believe that there isn't a hostile. So I did it.

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That's fantastic. And it's so cool here that you had exposure to this years ago in your youth, but it stayed in the back of your mind. So clearly it was something that you needed to do.

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Yeah, take care of and growing. And I think it's so important for the audience to hear that. You know, there's no perfect age or perfect time to get into this industry. And it's not constricted to that. And you shouldn't give up on those dreams. And you should always keep them going and see if it lines up down the road.

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Exactly. I mean, everybody that wants to open a hostile that I have met, they're fresh out of hostiling. And they just toured Europe. But they haven't saved the money that they need to get going. But you know, start saving and keep dreaming. And you can do it. And I really strongly strongly believe where there is a will, there is a way.

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Absolutely. Yeah, you just have to go for it. And if you really want to do it, you're going to have to do a lot of work and a lot of thinking and a lot of dedication. It's not just going to be like, oh, I opened a hostile. It was a bitch. It was hard.

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I think a lot of people have that experience. They go abroad or they try out South and they have the hostile experience to its truest form. And they're like, oh, my God, I want to open one of these. I can do this. Yeah, but they might want to open it for the party or for that experience. But they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg because what really goes out to make a place. It is a business. It is a business. And it is a complex business.

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You're hosting to all these different cultures, religions, walks of life, agents under one roof, try to make them all happy. Yeah, not a tax got a day to day basis. Now, now that is so cool to hear a bit about your journey. But now let's talk about this sexy building.

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Oh, yeah. Just one of the words describing what was it before you got it. This was built in 1890. This is in the India Street zone of the city. It was the old Jewish and Italian section. We still have an Italian street festival, which is awesome. It's literally half a block from here. They closed the streets. Awesome.

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But when I bought this building, it was in need of a lot of repair. So it was four storey. It still is four stories. But it was an apartment on each story and they're massive apartments. But they were really in need of sprucing up to the point that we had to demolish it all the way to the steps.

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You've got it the whole entire building. Everything came down. The only thing that I kept is that back staircase, the city allowed to keep allowed me to keep it. There was a beautiful front staircase that I went to battle to save it and they would not let me keep it for life safety.

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Life safety dictated a lot of this project. It was very difficult. But yeah, we took it all the way down to the studs. We redid the structural and we did it in nine months time. It was like a pregnancy. Crazy. It was crazy.

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That's so beautiful. So you got it down to studs and when you do something like that, it's us, us, the owners ourselves and you have to deal with local municipality. We actually operate out of historic homes and IGH that are from the 1880s. But as soon as you start to touch things, you really do open up a can of worms as far as how many city officials you have to deal with.

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Fire code, ADA, all these different things that egresses. You're making sure you have to write around a bathroom, mixed gender bathroom, all these different things.

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And every municipality has different sets of rules as to what that should be. And conflicting sometimes. Yes. So it was complicated. I can tell you that the beginning of my journey was that I've always wanted to do it. And then my next step was I actually read Vicki Mastis book.

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As we all did, it's like the Bible. Yeah. It was a great resource and she really helped me out. And she advised that the first thing you do, my friend, is you contact the zoning department in your city. And so that's what I did. I wrote an email and I said, I would like to open a hostel in this city. I noticed there isn't one.

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Are there any ordinances against their one existing or are there certain zones that I can put this? And she wrote back. She was awesome. Actually, everybody in the city was really good, if anything. But the one complaint I have is everybody's so overworked.

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Yeah, that it's a shame. But I literally went, I went from that. I got the zoning and then I walked into the business development office of the city hall and they had put out a brochure saying doing business important. And it was like a 40 page read and it told you exactly all the different things, all the hurdles that you need to consider.

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And it was extraordinary. And that was just like reading that first book. And she also, and I encourage you if you want to do this, to reach out to those people, let them help you. The city was good, but we definitely had to blaze that trail.

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Yes. So then I got the go ahead. I found the building. I told the city this is what I wanted to do. And before I did it, do I have their permission to do it? And they were like, yes, but you still have to jump through all these hoops. Then I started in on the financing hoops. And I went to four different banks. I was actually approved it.

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Three out of four. That's very rare. It was really good. I had to come up with the business model and that was something I had never done before. But of course you need to do it. It's a business. That's a good process to do though.

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And now I have to go back to that spreadsheet that I originally designed and put the real numbers in that are starting to come to fruition. So I did that, but I had to have, I couldn't even, I also got a small business association law, which was wonderful.

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So I have a local bank and they have the SBA. They brought in the SBA, which was awesome. And it's great that the government is helping me. And at some point for listeners to hear about, because a lot of times people get discouraged and they give up before getting to these processes. But you can look at these municipalities in two ways. You can look at them as the body that's going to stop you from doing this or the body is going to help you get it done. And if you can work with them, that's how you get through this. You have to work with them. Yes. You can't avoid them. They're not the enemy. Yeah. Good point.

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And I think that if you go to them, prepare with a business model and not just pipe dreams and throwing out ideas, if you show them you're serious and put the time and effort into it, they'll give you the same time and effort back. Yeah. And I think a lot of people get bad reputations in those municipalities jobs. More so because they are overworked. They need to be cloned. Yes. They're trying to do the job of 10 people because of tax cuts. And some of the rules are ridiculous and they know it, but those are the rules and they have to follow them. And you know, life safety.

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You know, life safety is a bitch, but it makes sense. And you know, when I think about it, everybody's like, oh my God, all the rules, all the rules. I was like, yeah, but you know, this isn't the anarchy hostile, you know, and that wouldn't work. My friends. So rules are the, you have for a reason. Some of them are obsolete and that, you know, need to be refreshed.

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And that is a part of what I hope when we hopefully do a North American trade association for hostels to be able to compile a lot of documents that show how each municipality has treated a hostile and how it is actually even defined in the code books and educate people.

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And I mean, I called other people and said, well, how do you define this? How did your city do that? But if we can just really compile that information.

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It's so very true because different cities, different states, you know, you have New York City who banned hostels a few years ago, except for H.I. Then you have cities like this where it seems as though they have actually increased who made a designation for the hostile.

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And then San Diego where we're at, they say, hey, we allow hostels, but we're not giving your own designation. You're a hotel and you have to play by the hotel's rules, which can be very difficult. So you're not a hotel.

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So, you know, from city to city, municipality to municipality, it is difficult. But I do agree with you completely that a trade association of sorts to give strength in numbers, give a bigger voice with smaller operators all together is what is needed.

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Now, before we turn to the next session, I want to hear a little bit more about this facility's layout as far as how many people do we have? What's our occupancy?

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Well, we have 12 rooms. Six are dorms. Six are private. We have male. We have male. We have female. Since there wasn't a hostel before, I really didn't know who was going to come.

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So I built it to address all those needs. So they're male, female, coed. You can book some of the dorms as privates. We have doubles, triples, 48 beds, sleep 58.

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We have 10 full size beds. This room behind me is our ADA compliant room. I think the ratio is that you have to have one ADA compliant for every 12 or 15 rooms. I just happen to have 12.

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I did have to regrade the sidewalk to make it accessible. I have two bunk beds in there, but they're full size mattresses.

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So it's just a little more comfy and that can be booked as a private and sleep eight. If it's a booked as a dorm, one person per bed, please.

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Try to keep it closer. All right. Well, we're here with Heather at the Black Elephant in Portland. We'll be back right after this short sponsorship break. We're going to talk a little bit more about the complications and endeavors you have to overcome to open up the first hostel in Portland.

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Hey, James. I have a question for you now. How can you be here on the road with us recording all these podcasts away from your six properties?

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It's easy. I rely on cloud beds as my wingman. They all own one property management suite to help grow my reservations and keep guests happy. With cloud bed software, I have one place where I can see everything going on with my businesses from daily check ins to comprehensive reporting.

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And how does your staff like it? My staff loves it too because it's incredibly easy to use and automates a lot of their daily tasks. This means we all get to focus on the most important thing, our guest experience.

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Cool. And how can a hostel owner get started? Our friends at CloudBeds are offering a $50 credit to Hostel Road Trip podcast listeners. Just visit cloudbeds.com forward slash road trip. Again, go to cloudbeds.com forward slash R-O-A-D-T-L-I-P and see why tens of thousands of properties trust CloudBeds to power over 700,000 beds worldwide.

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Welcome back to Hostel Road Trip. We are ready to dive into our next topic, which we're going to focus and hone in on more of the strategies and difficulties that you had to overcome in opening up not only the first hostel in Portland, but just a hostel in general and gutting into studs and rebuilding it with all these things. These are all very challenging issues that you've overcome and you nailed it because it's so beautiful in here. And then also we'll dive into a little bit of the trending issue of Airbnb with CloudBeds.

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Okay. But with the focus of this podcast series, being a hostel awareness in the American industry, trying to break down the barriers of the millennial demographic, getting them to try out this experience because as we've found, once they do try it, they love it. They love it. And we need more hostels like this one exactly that are touched up and dialed in.

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It's a little bit, it's a little bit tiki. And I did that on purpose because since there wasn't one here before, I didn't know who my demographic would be. And I figured it would be Bostonian millennials and people coming up from New York City.

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We also wanted to touch base on the stigma, the perception that we're trying to overcome, not only both for the trap, but for municipalities. The community. Yeah. And the outreach element. So tell us a bit about this open house you had. I want to talk to the viewers.

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The open house was interesting. We opened up, we had no one else, for like four or five hours and actually went on longer. We had, I think, 200 or more people come through and check out the space. And people were like, oh my gosh, I didn't know what a hostel was.

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So people thought it was maybe going to be a flop house, a brothel, a halfway house, a place for homeless people. Yeah, nothing good. And there were a fair amount of people that hadn't hosteled since they were in Europe in their youth.

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But everybody that came through was like, oh my God, I'm so relieved. I didn't really know what to expect. And it's in our community. And I'm happy to send my guests here. And when you were living in a city, I mean, I honestly didn't even have enough room for my own children in my condo.

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So one of the rooms I designed for one of my kids to live here. But it is the kind of place where the people in the community were like, oh my gosh, if I have house guests, I'm totally sending them here. And it's affordable enough too, because it's kind of embarrassing. It's like an awesome city, but you don't want to invite your friends to a city where they have to shell out $400 to stay there. And you don't want to shell it out either. So it's really kind of cool.

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That's really what we've seen a lot with hostels going into communities is that it's a hub for world travelers who are coming through. And it's so important for each community to have a good hostel. Just like you're saying.

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Yeah, but it's also great for the locals' house guests too. And it gives you a little bit of separation. So you're not sleeping on the couch. Or if you want to go and mutter to your spouse about how annoying they really are and you've forgotten because you haven't seen them in 10 years, a little privacy.

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But it is a nice space. Something else that a lot of hostels... something was important to me when I designed this was cleanliness.

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Yes.

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Especially in the bathrooms.

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Oh, for shared elements.

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Yes. Because I think that's where people are like, oh, I don't want to take a shower. So we focused on that. I chose there's no grout anywhere.

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We noticed that last night. Beautiful bathrooms.

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Yeah, I chose materials that clean very easily. The toilets have clean sides. There is no moldy shower curtain. Everybody gets their own bath mat and hand towel.

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So that you don't step out of the shower and go, ugh.

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Yes. We're going to talk a bit more about that in the next section of Operational Strategies because we loved your bathroom.

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You got the purple floor. Not everybody got the purple floor.

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I looked at Bobby and I feel like Bobby's become a tiling specialist over the years because we always have to re-tile things and we have to re-browse the water that's underneath and it cracks.

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We're looking at this last night like, this is amazing.

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It's done right.

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Yeah.

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Well, I knew I was going to be cleaning.

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Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point.

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But I want to just touch base on that community outreach again because for other hostel managers and owners out there, you are in essence an ambassador for the industry. In an industry that does have a bad reputation.

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In an industry that if we don't get the word out about there about these awesome hostels, that these bigger players like Hilton and Marriott will smother us up, gobble us up, and they're trying to take the hostile word out of everything because they just don't like the stigma.

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So I think that that type of community outreach is necessary amongst all hostels because you hear so much about, oh, our neighbors don't like us, the community doesn't like us, I have some problems with the city.

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You've got to be proactive and you've got to engage.

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You've got to get it inside your place and show them that it's not what they think.

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It's not a flop house. It's not section 8 housing. It's not a drug house. It's not a party house for kids. It's not any of those.

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And once you get them in there, you can break down that barrier.

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Now, another barrier breaker in the industry and one that we feel at ICH actually and at WorldPact as well shares the same opinion that Airbnb helped shift and open up a large area of the shared economy for these kids.

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Absolutely.

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And we use them as an OTA within our hostile and as opposed to a lot of other hostels that think they're the devil.

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Now, what is your experience?

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I do not think that they're devil and I think they are helping to launch the global shared economy, the Ubers, the Airbnbs.

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It is proving to people that you can sleep in a stranger's house and live to tell the tale and actually end up making good friends and connections and not having like a sterile experience where you're just tucked away in your hotel room and the window doesn't open.

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You're like, I am not against Airbnb.

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I do feel that enough cities are having trouble with Airbnb.

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And now that I'm in the lodging industry, I totally get the concerns and the complaints against the industry.

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Fair is fair. I pay my taxes.

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I had to adhere to my life safety and I feel that everybody else should as well.

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And I am not opposed to Airbnb.

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I've stated Airbnb and I think it serves a great purpose, but I think it does need to be regulated a little bit more.

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How is it here in Portland regulated wise?

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They're just starting to follow the same model as Charleston.

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And they're really starting to police it.

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They've invested in some software to locate it if you're not registering.

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They have passed some ordinances this year where it's $100 to you.

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It's $100 for the first room, $250 for the second, $1,000 for the next and $2,500 for the fourth.

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And you can only list four rooms.

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But I think that a reason why I was able to jump through and they allowed me to jump all through all these hoops to open the hostel is they realized that I was the perfect solution for the crisis of Airbnb, which is breaking up the communities.

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And the reality is that there are people that have investment money and they're buying up in the gentrification of the city, they're buying up these starter homes and then there is no housing.

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And I do understand that side of it.

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I mean, if you have one home and you're running out of room, I get it.

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That's great. You're hoping to pay your mortgage.

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But if you're running out of these rooms to pay your five mortgages on your five houses that you've eliminated from the housing pool, it's a bummer.

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So I think that I mean, I like Airbnb. It has helped launch the idea of being more communal and frugal and environmental.

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Yeah, it's interesting, as you're saying, you have all these outside investors that are like you're saying, starting up five, six Airbnbs.

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It'd be amazing if instead of doing that, if they just consolidated and started creating more hostels like this.

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It would be better for the housing crisis in a lot of cities.

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Yeah, I think the city would be pleased to see how this is turning out.

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And, you know, we are the first in the city. This is a wonderful city. I see more coming.

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I see some competition propping up. I have other ideas as well, but I'm going to stick with this one, get it going, start paying back those loans.

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But yeah, no, I feel like I've contributed to the society by doing this.

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That's a very good point for Airbnb. It doesn't have to be an extreme. You can use it for your platform and embrace it.

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But at the same time, I acknowledge and think that the housing crisis, it breaks up neighborhoods that used to be neighborhoods and back to that issue of safety.

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The reality is, I hope it doesn't get to this, but if they don't get ahead of the safety concerns, then one horrible instance is going to happen or a fire happens or something like that.

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There's a lot of people in that house and they didn't have the right egress, alarms, fire extinguishers.

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This is a serious issue.

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This is stuff that as much as you might as a hostile owner complain or think that paying that fire safety company and having the right, that gives you peace of mind to sleep at night.

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No one ever wants to be in that situation where you put people in an unsafe environment.

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I had to sprinkle this entire building. I had to put a lot of money in. I had to apply for a street opening permit. I had to police that. I had to run new water lines.

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I had to put in extra water lines. Be prepared and just do it.

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If you want to open the hostel, figure out what you absolutely have to do and just, you know, you're going to have to do it.

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Don't cut corners in those areas.

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No, don't cut corners. I mean, I feel really good. I am completely compliant.

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All right. Well, we are just cruising along here in Portland at the Black Elephant.

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We're going to take a quick break for our sponsorship and we'll be back with Miss Heather Lover.

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Welcome back to Hostile Road Trip. We're here in Portland at the Black Elephant Hostel.

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And now we're going to talk a bit about the operational strategies which make your hostel great in the experience authentic.

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Obviously, we talked a lot about the difficulty of getting past the municipalities, the zoning, the permits, the process of gutting a building down to its studs and rebuilding it.

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But then obviously, once you open the doors, you can have all these systems and operations in place that, as we talked about a bit before, are a work of art in motion as well, especially as you are the owner operator.

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So then you start to find yourself in that natural progression of, well, I've been cleaning all the bathrooms, but eventually someone's going to clean these for me and then build out the procedure to do so,

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which takes a lot of trust. But we're going to talk a bit about that. But to start, back to that, gutting it down to the studs and talking a bit more about the materials that you chose to build afterwards and how much this has, in my eyes, set you up for success in the area of cleanliness.

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I headed off to the flooring store with my budget and it was tight. I chose this floor that we're on now is marmoleum, which is actually, I think it's original linoleum. It's environmentally correct and it's seamless and it mops like a dream and it's awesome.

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It just rolls out?

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Yeah. This is sheet product.

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Really? It just feels so dope.

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It's so awesome.

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Designing your place, we learned a lot at ITH. We got started and we're in houses and you start to refinish it residential, but it only lasts a year or so and you're doing it again. When you're designing your hostel, you really need to think commercial grade.

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The flooring was tile section flooring, so I can pop one of those out when somebody throws up on it. But you have to, like, I really, when I designed this, and it sounds disgusting, but I designed it with vomit in mind.

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That's what you're going to do. You get puke proof.

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I also charge a fee for vomit.

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You got to?

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The chunder fee. You know, we try to have you stay within your limits, but we all fail at that from time to time.

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Yeah, but I think what's important to highlight in this kind of operation is that by doing this and by putting in these commercial grade elements and thinking about it, not cutting corners, you set up your operational strategies for success.

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Because as we were walking around last night, we were like, imagine how much time would be saved in our operation of cleaning 15 or 20 bathrooms at our place if every bathroom had this commercial setup.

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Different materials.

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And you could just bleach it, clean it, and you're not like, oh, this grout and this tile's cracked and this is over here. You waste a lot of time and money in not doing it commercial.

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Now, obviously we are in love with so many of the things like the wallpaper and the floor, but let's talk more about into the guest experience of your operational strategy.

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Tell us some of the traditions or events in here. Do you have meals in towns? How does that work?

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You know, we've been really kind of winging it and at capacity for these first few months.

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And it's been hard to put anything in place, especially like we've been 100% occupied and it's been rough going and we've been doing it on a little bit of just very few staff members.

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I have plans for like down season to do some Hawaiian shirt parties, some poker nights, and to have more community type events.

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On season, I don't want as many locals here, but I do want to bring the community in as well. So I'm going to do some of that.

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We do have, we had a pancake cook off, we have some competition.

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I heard about that from staff last night.

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Yeah, no, we don't have everything all set up yet. I haven't even begun to market yet. It's been word of mouth.

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You hit the ground running and you sold out.

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But it's going to start slowing down.

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When you opened, you said June 15th?

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June 14th we opened. We had two people show up that evening and we didn't even know how to check them in. It was crazy.

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Three days later we were 60% occupied and then two weeks later we were 100. And we were running.

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And I knew when I started that there was a lot that I did not know. I'm not going to pretend that I know what I'm doing because I'm still learning every day.

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And be real about that.

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Staying flexible is the biggest advice you have to ask there. You have to be flexible and see things and adjust to the market.

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Be like a chameleon to the situation of your market.

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I'm in my middle years so that's harder. I'm like no! But no, it has been good.

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But with that, I think it's important to highlight this. We talked to your staff a little bit last night and we were trying to see if the manager was on site.

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And they told us that the first manager didn't last too long, about two weeks.

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And I would always say that it's very important, especially in those early stages, to hire slow and fire fast.

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And I did.

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And you did that. And that's very important because a lot of people in that moment of stress, that overwhelming, oh my god, we're sold out.

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I can't get rid of this person. I'll deal with it all by myself.

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It would have been so much more damaging to keep that person around than allow it to mess up you being the brand and the energy around them.

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Yeah. And really, when you say energy, it's the energy that I hire for.

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Yes. We're in the same way.

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You know, your vibe is very important to the hostel.

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Yep. Contagious.

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So even if you're a world traveler, if you're a stick in the mud, it ain't happening.

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Yeah.

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You know what I mean?

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Yeah, I feel it. So that's very good advice for listeners out there.

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But back to the traveler here, so obviously we've been sold out. It's rock here in the summer.

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And the events are going to be developing as we kind of catch our breath into the winter here.

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Right.

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And getting in some more in-house events and also some more community outreach events.

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Now, to talk about two of the obstacles or pillars that we're trying to break down for that millennial demographic,

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it's been comfortable to just try it out. And that's all we're asking you out there.

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Just try it once at one of these highly reputable hostels like here in the Black Elf in Portland.

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But what would you say for security and clemeness, the big two there that really people have a hard time breaking down with all this shared environment?

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I have traveled a fair amount and I've done so as a solo female traveler.

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And I feel safer in a hostel.

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You're a bunch of numbers.

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You have a buddy system. And when you don't return to your bunk, people notice and are like, hey, well, we last saw her drinking tequila.

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And that's the other thing too, is that this is a family traveler hostel. Often this is branded as, people are like, oh, it's a youth hostel.

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It's like, no, it's not a youth hostel. You're in 50. We have guests here that are over 70.

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The vibe changes on a nightly basis, depending on who checks into the establishment.

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So it's a completely different feel from day to day. But I would say that we've had pretty consistent. It's been pretty consistent.

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I think people are spreading word and it's like the same kind of group coming in.

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And a lot of people that come here, they're like, I don't really ever want to stay in a hotel again because you get to talk to strangers.

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And we're all dying for connection.

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Yeah. Everyone's looking at their phone, their iPad. And we talk about that all the time.

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This is something that the millennial demographic, because they've grown up in this desensitized social media world of just being with your gadgets.

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This is an opportunity to have a very authentic sharing of experiences with other human beings.

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Yeah. A little connection. And then how about reception? Is it a 24 hour reception?

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No, I have reception from 7 a.m. to 11. Then I lock. 7-11. I like it.

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Then I lock the door at 11 a.m. and we reopen at 3 p.m. And that is our housekeeping shift.

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OK, so you got a little. You can still hang out here, whatever.

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But I'm not if you show up and knock on the front door, depending on the mood, I'm man.

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I will either let you in or say, sorry, we're closed. It's all an email I gave you.

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I give them all that information ahead of time. And then we open up from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.

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We discourage late check in because we find it disruptive, especially if you're in a dorm.

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We require that you stay in a private and there is a late check in fee if you come in rolling in past 10, 1030.

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That's you know, these are nice features to keep the operation flowing, avoid a lot of these problems.

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So for the listeners out there, especially for the travelers, it can seem like a nuisance,

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but you need to know the underlying reasoning behind this. As you just talked a bit about the late check in,

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you don't want to be waking everyone up and all these things. And then with that lockout period,

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which they're not actually locked out of your existing guests who still come in hostels for years,

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had that for the reasons you got to get into the place and clean it up. Yeah.

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Let your housekeepers reset this experience for the next guest coming in.

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And it's hard to do when you got people laying all over the place. People get angry when they can't check in early.

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But I'm like, we're actually we're making it clean for you. And then they're like, oh, yeah.

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And as far as security is concerned, is that it has gone leaps and bounds since the old youth hostels.

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I can change. I have somebody come in that I'm like, you know, I don't ever want him coming in here again.

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I can change, reprogram all the locks. And that's the access code that everybody gets.

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And we have the technology to say we change locks today. Yeah. And here's the new lock.

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And then as far as security, we do have security cameras in the communal space downstairs.

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The rest of it is all private and the exterior.

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We have floodlighting and we have cameras on the exterior as well.

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We have key cards to get in your rooms. And then we also provide lockers with keys.

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Very nice lock. Very nice. Yeah.

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Yeah, that was that was a big hit to the budget for sure. Sure.

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But people really do appreciate having lockers and having lockers in their own rooms.

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So they're not traveling to another part of the building to get their things.

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I definitely loved it. And that is just those small creature comforts in here that you have to come see the black elephant in person in Portland to really appreciate how well designed and put together the flow of this place is.

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We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll be closing out our episode here at the Black Elephant with this Heather Loeber.

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And we're going to be talking a bit about the perfect day and the guest experience here in Portland, Maine.

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So stay tuned.

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All right. We're going to close out by talking about a great day here in Portland for a prospective guest that's checking into the Black Elephant Hostel.

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And what are some things that they can get an experience in outside of the hostel in Portland?

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Well, Portland is truly an amazing city. I love it. The people here are just real. You just feel comfortable. You feel welcome.

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No matter who you are, what color you are, what gender you are, it's just we're all really real people.

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The city is so walkable that if you have a day, you're going to see a lot of it. If you have three, you're going to really see a ton of it.

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We were just voted the foodiest city in the country by Bon Appetit. And it's for real. We really are that awesome.

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I can't recommend and steer you wrong. We actually have two James Beard award winning restaurants, literally a block and a half from here.

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We have an awesome dive bar, a half a block from here. We have food co-op.

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We have a lot of ferries. The ferry terminal is a four block walk from here.

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And you can explore Casco Bay and stop on all the different islands.

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There's this great island called Peaks Island that people really enjoy going to for a day trip.

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We actually have some awesome beaches when it's really nice out. It's just we have great museums. The whole thing is just good.

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It's a really cool city. It's a trending city. And I'm shocked that there wasn't a hostel in this city.

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So it's great that you brought to it. And I think that this is the perfect type of city for a backpacker because like you said, it's fully walkable.

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We each got in here last night. We parked our car. We haven't touched since.

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And it was very easy for us to just go walk about without any map, without any direction and just stumble into ship.

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No, the city is just so awesome. We have something called the Old Port, which is we're one block outside of Old Port in the India Street neighborhood here.

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And it has cobblestone streets. It's really charming. Like I every day that I walk the city, which I do with my dogs and stuff, I'm just blown away at the beauty of it all seasons. It's just beautiful.

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Yeah, it is a gorgeous space. Well, I think it's the type of city that you can come and create your own experience very easily.

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And you don't have to rely on any big events because you have everything here. It's all within walking distance. And it's a great time.

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So we highly recommend that you come to Portland and you stay at the Black Elven Hostel and really get this experience and see this beautiful new place.

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Because I really do think that you have highlighted the model of the future for the American hostel that can caters that millennial demographic,

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cater to some of our higher necessity needs that we have compared to the other backpackers. And this is a home run. And I just see you flourishing here.

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Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for being with us, Heather. I'm so glad you guys came. Robert Dyer. He's a good time. Thanks a lot, Heather.

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Eric Ferria. Thank you guys. And we are Hostel Road Trip. I'm Jimmy Black and we are done with our New England tour. Ten episodes deep. Stay tuned as we move westward.