question. You know, one thing I've started kind of learning,
this is more internally for myself, but been trying to live
more authentically in the last few years and trying to tear down
walls that I'd put up between my life, my personal life, my
business, you know, I ran a hostel for almost 10 years. And
my friends would come see the hostel, they knew what I did. But
they really weren't a part of my, my hostel experience. I kind of
had a hostel life and my own life back in Nashville. Being
out here, it's been all encompassing, you know, my
life is the hostel now, the hostel is my life. And it's been
kind of exciting to let those lines blur.
Hello, friends and travelers, thanks for listening. You are
riding along on the hostel 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. I'm your host, Jimmy Black,
joined alongside co-founder of International Travelers House
Body Dyer. Each session, we sit down with hostel operators or
travel influencers to hear about their road success, discuss
trending hostel topics, and close with tips for travelers who
are seeking to have the ultimate experience when visiting
each destination. You can't afford to miss this trip. Now
fasten your seat belts and let's hit the road.
Welcome back to the Hostel Road Trip Podcast. I'm Jimmy Beyer
here with my co-founder and partner at ITH Hostels, Robert,
and we're with Ryan from the Monterey Hostel, one of the coolest
two hostels on the California coast. Thanks so much for
everyone for being with us today.
Thanks. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it.
I've been telling Bob, I've really been excited to do this
episode because Ryan, your journey is just so fascinating.
We've done a podcast with you before over in Nashville, where
you started out at the Music City Hostel, which we were doing
a podcast a couple of weeks ago with the Santa Cruz Hostel,
which is one of your former coworkers running that shop over
there. But that also came from Nashville.
Indeed. We've spread our wings from our days in Nashville and
slowly taking over California, trying to compete with you guys.
Trying to travel over.
There's plenty of beautiful coastline, thankfully, so plenty
of space for everyone. But I think it's such a cool story.
Just to touch base a bit on that for those of you who don't
know, Ryan was the manager of the Music City Hostel in
Nashville. They actually had two locations. One of them was
this beautiful brand new hostel that we had talked about in
the previous episode, unfortunately, had a terrorist
attack a few years back that caused a lot of significant
damage to that. Can you touch base on that real quick, just
because it's such a wild story?
Absolutely. So for context, I'm Ryan Oding. I run Monterey
Hostel, but prior to opening the hostel here in Monterey, I
worked in Nashville and operated Nashville Downtown
Hostel and Music City Hostel for almost a decade. I've been
doing this now for over 10 years and had the opportunity to
come and try to save Monterey Hostel from going under
during COVID. So kind of the background of this story is a
little wild. I was working in Nashville operating the two
hostels there. And when COVID happened, we started kind of
looking outward and trying to find, I guess we knew
properties were probably going to start going under. And so we
kind of saw it as an opportunity to step in and try to help some
other hostels keep going, but also to expand our footprint
in Nashville and open some other locations. And so we started
the process of buying Monterey Hostel out here, hostling
international ran a property here for 20 years, and they closed
it during COVID. And so we as part of Nashville Hostel, the
owner and operator there purchased a property in Monterey,
the hostel here. And our idea was that we would kind of use
Nashville as a way to float a hostel here in California and
started the process to buy the property here. And a few days
after we secured funding for this project, a guy on Christmas
morning in 2020 built a bomb in his RV and he blew up a city
block in Nashville. And crazy enough, he was trying to blow up
an AT&T data hub. And our hostel in Nashville was across the
street from that data hub. So on Christmas morning, this guy
blew up a city block in our hostel was significantly
damaged as a part of that attack in the city. Fortunately, none
of our guests were injured. Nobody died from it. But we did have
guests in the hostel when the bomb went off, we had staff
going off and yeah, all this was Christmas morning. So it was
a pretty wild, very Christmas. Yeah. And, you know, sadly, it's
we're still navigating a bad faith insurance settlement with
our insurance company and the future of our hostel in Nashville
is still uncertain as we kind of have to work through insurance
and recovery to figure out if and when we'll be able to
reopen there. So, you know, it was kind of crazy that started
this process of opening Monterey Hostel because we had good
intentions, we wanted to step in and try to save a hostel from
going under and kind of in the process of doing all that, we
lost the the hostel in Nashville, both hostels that
initially helped make all of this happen. So it's been kind of
a crazy last four years since COVID trying to make a hostel
happen here in Monterey and and still trying to make a hostel
happen in Nashville. But yeah, it's been crazy. It's a wild
story. Crazy for years. Absolutely. You come across the
hostel in Monterey, like how did you hear it was for sale or
what was that process like? You know, it's for me, I was I had
never heard of Monterey. I the owner who I had worked for in
Nashville grew up in California, he grew up in Orange County,
and had spent he went to Cal Poly and I spent quite a bit of
time in Central California and in the Silicon Valley Bay Area.
So that's kind of where he came of age and spent most of his
early adulthood. And then life took him to Nashville. And he
kind of left his career as job and started the hostels there.
But he had roots in this area. And the reason he got into
hosting or a big part of it was from his experience staying at
hostels in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There was a hostel
called the Sandborn Hostel. And that was kind of one of his big
introductions to hosteling. So when he heard that H.I. was
closing down Monterey hostel, he felt compelled to do what he
could to try to keep it going since this part of California is
what launched his career into hosteling and he wanted to find
a way to get back to that. So that's kind of why Monterey was
kind of piqued interest. And for me, you know, my kind of our
business plan in COVID was I was going to stay in Nashville and
kind of oversee the operations there. And the owner, Ron and
his wife were going to come oversee the development of
Monterey. And then with the bombing, it kind of flipped all
those plans up. They now had to stay in Nashville and deal with
property there. And I essentially lost my job overnight.
Because it blew up. So we had a we had a conversation a couple
weeks or days after the bombing when we were just like, you
know, what the hell happened? And what are we gonna do? And for
me, I was, you know, single and and in a place of life where I
was like, you know, hey, I'll go, I'll like go oversee getting
Monterey open. So initially, I was just out here to oversee
development, get us through permitting, get us through
permitting, get us through like the design, the building
process. But in the course of trying to get this hostel
opened, took three and a half years for us to renovate and
and get open, which is a whole separate kind of crazy
experience. I fell in love with Central California and
decided I wanted to stick around and and run the hostel here.
So here I am. We're open in parts of this year. And I'm
excited. That's amazing. I'd love to hear that story.
Or yeah, definitely want to dive into kind of the the
development process. We have a similar experience with Santa
Barbara, redeveloping that property and making it a
hostel can. I'd love to hear your side of it. But I was gonna
add it's so interesting that for hostel entrepreneurs and
people wanting to get into hostels, a great thing you can
do is start to find hostels in your area and see what the
owners are and you know, maybe partner up with them or go
work for them and learn the hostel as you know, many people
you know, many people run hostels for 10, 15 years and they get
tired and they want to move on and they need someone to pass
the torch to and absolutely. That's a common thing that
happens in a hostel. So it could be a great tip there. But how
about the tell us about the development like is I know you
could probably talk forever about it, but walk us through kind
of the you know, what you walked into on day one and then what
was the you know, what was the vision and and kind of the
steps and the hiccups along the way. I didn't know it was an
existing hostel. I thought you just started this. So yeah,
this is interesting. Yeah. That's how it was. Right. So yeah,
the the hostel had been here and when we we acquired the
building, it was in pretty you know, rough shape. Rough might
be harsh, but it was the last maintenance. Yes, lots of
deferred maintenance and the layout and the facility was
pretty limiting, especially kind of in a post covered world.
You know, it had 1213 bed dormitories and it I believe only
had like six rooms, six or seven rooms on the property. So it
held about 50 people, but all of those people were were packed
into really large dormitories and there was one or two private
rooms. You know, everything had shared bathrooms. So you know,
when we came in, we had decided we were going to renovate and
reconfigure the property to make it more just to make it
nicer, but also to make the business make sense more and
make it more you know, desirable. So you know, when I came out
here, we hired an architect. We worked with an architect named
Terry Fisher, who is on the the board of directors for Santa
Cruz hostel and she had formally consulted a lot with
hosting international and and had done architecture and
design on several hostels throughout her career. So I
worked very closely with her to kind of go through every step
of the renovation and you know, process. We got to redesign
the building. We got to get it down to the bones. But in the
course of doing all of that, we found a lot of other problems
with the building maintenance or foundation issues. We had
structural improvements we had to make to bring it up to code
for earthquake. We had to redo the entire plumbing and
electrical system. So I mean, we really gutted the building
down to its core ran into several problems kind of along
the way. You know, we got our plans. We got our designs done.
I spent 17 months total waiting for permits from the city of
Monterey. So it was 17 months we had to carry the cost of the
building and and wait while you know, we were just waiting on
permission to begin construction and then you know,
doing this project at the tail end of covid supply chain
issues, getting materials, everything was so expensive
and challenging and difficult. We knew that this would be
you know, a big project. We knew it would be more difficult
than our development projects in Nashville.
Just because California is a more difficult state to do
business in and there's a lot more regulations and hoops.
But we kind of mis-projected quite how long it would take.
The time we spent waiting on on permits is about how long we
thought the whole renovation would take. So that was maybe a
bit of a it was a big lesson for us in doing this. But
those are painful days when you're just bleeding money from
everywhere. Absolutely. At the end of the tunnel. Those are the
worst. Absolutely. And just also at times not feeling like we
had access to like building officials that all the power
was in their hands to approve our designs and during covid
there there was no like we couldn't make desk appointments.
You couldn't go into an office and like talk with a city
planner or talk with a building official. Everything had to
happen online virtually through like email. And so just all of
those kind of challenges that existed because of covid
really compounded and really delayed this project.
And we also were kind of railroaded into making a lot of
improvements on the property that you know the building
official at the time. They're no longer with the building
department here in Monterey but they kind of forced us to make
a lot of improvements and changes that just cost a lot of
money and things were unexpected. So it was definitely a
it was a fun creative process. I loved getting to design and
open a hostel and work through all of that. But man three and
a half years to do a a six thousand square foot renovation
is absolutely crazy. And that was kind of our experience here
in Monterey trying to get something done. Yeah.
I'd be curious to hear some about y'all's experience too with
Santa Barbara because I followed it really closely because we
were kind of doing this at the same time. Yeah I feel like we
had the same building inspector.
Yeah we really was the same type of brutal thing. Yeah.
Yeah we focused on restoring the original bone.
So because we weren't changing things that expedited the process quite a bit.
We were just like we the building we renovated was brutal.
There I think there was homeless people living in there and it was just
nasty but you know we you know gutted it down to the studs and then you know
putting new drywall and paying. If you're not changing stuff
then you you know you're just restoring stuff. There's different
regulations. Totally totally and that had been our
intention and our objective. We didn't touch the outside. We were
just doing an interior renovation and then we ran into an issue with a
wheelchair lift our building split level. So it's
and when you walk in the front it's those stairs that go up and stairs that go
down and we had a wheelchair lift at work. I used it several times
in the property but it didn't meet current
code and dimensions for a wheelchair lift.
And we ran into issues with elevator service providers in the state
being willing to come service this lift that was
kind of out of current code and it led to this whole problem between
like our ability to repair and fix this this lift and get it serviced
to get approvals with the city. We ended up getting
kind of our hands tied and we had to build a ramp on the outside of the
building, build a deck, cut a new entrance into our property.
And so it just opened this can of worms that we
had to kind of chase down and work through
because of a like a lift that
worked fine but we couldn't get an inspection on it
because of how old it was. So it caused all these other delays
and add-ons in the middle of the project that
were very costly and time-consuming to do.
We're now fully ADA accessible. We have two wheelchair accessible rooms. One's a
dormitory. All of our rooms are are en suite here at
Monterey Hostel. So we have 13 rooms. They all have en suite bathrooms
and you know it's a nice property but we made a lot of improvements. We
hadn't necessarily anticipated. Yeah it's done now.
Once it's done, you feel so proud and
official about that. Congratulations on that so much.
But Bob brings up the good point of you know in the Santa Barbara experience
we had, it was definitely, they were like here are the
original blueprints from the guys. It was similar to your building
once previously a hostel. And they were like if you keep everything the same
as this hostel was, you know, then we'll give you the
pathway. But then even with that, then it came down to funny as
it is a handicap bathroom. You know and one inspector came in and was like okay
I want the toilet here facing this way and all that. And then the other one
comes in and oh I want you to turn the toilet over this way.
And it's just that whole process of all right go back to the drawing board find
the contractor get everything redone, replumbed, all the electricals got to
move. Now the handle's going to go over here and you're like wow you know the
the whole place took this long and then one bathroom took the same amount of
time you know. Yeah. Just that one little area and
then as you said as you open the can of worms oh you open up that wall I see
that this is a you know this wiring's not out to code anymore you gotta redo all
that now. So it can really be a challenge in
California and we feel your pain. I know you do.
How about the first opening day is kind of moving towards the open is that's
always an exciting time walk us through say the first hundred days of when you
got open. Well you know leading up to it was so
chaotic because we have been delayed for almost two years on this construction
project and so I just was like I kind of lost a little bit of hope that we were
ever going to get our our occupancy permit to open and we still had quite a
bit of stuff that we were waiting on different contractors to complete and
the building inspector showed up for our initial inspection and ended up
kind of passing us like we had gotten through all the major items and
and so I hadn't expected to kind of get Greenlit to open quite so fast
but I had a few weeks between getting permitted
and getting the building kind of fully operational or I had yeah like a
week between the two to kind of get everything finalized.
But we opened in March, March 1st of this year and man it was my mom and
her friend came for the week to kind of help me get the hostel up and running
and and they like clean windows and just helped all this.
You know I cashed in a lot of favors from friends and family and community that I
built along the way and the time to get this place open. It's like I'm very
fortunate to have had good friends that run Santa Cruz
hostel and and some of my other hostel friends that I've made over the years
come out and just helped me set up beds and like get mattresses and
wash linens and you know do all the things that you need to get the place
open. And the you know fortunately I did have
guests on opening day. I didn't pre-book stuff more than it was like a week out
but I got a few reservations on our first night so that was exciting and then
you know the first few weeks there were days where nobody was there.
It was just me in the hostel and I was like oh this is a failure you know this
business is gonna crumble and you know March was pretty
slow but I could feel like you know picking up week after week and feedback
was really positive. People were excited and then
April just took off and we like got really busy really fast. I hired somebody
part-time and then like within a month was like okay I need you full time.
So you know good problem to have and then May and June and July
have been really really strong and positive here. This month of July we're
almost sold out every night. Like this week Monday and tonight we're 100%
booked you know on a Monday and Tuesday in the summer. So it's been
it's been I expected this to do well but I've been surprised at just how
busy we've been but also how awesome and easy
our guests have been to to deal with. So it's been really fun and exciting so
far. We're yeah about four months in now and
you know I have a lot to see. That's awesome. The winter months are always a
little more bearable in this part of California but
yeah business is doing great feedback's been great.
My staff my my like volunteer program everything has been
going really well. So it's been a great summer so far.
Very excited. Nice what it is far as now you've ran a great hospital in Nashville
and in Monterey. What would you have what have you learned that you feel like
is it I don't know the secret or what are the what's the big thing you focus on
to try to be the best you can be. That's such a big question.
You know one one thing I've started kind of learning
this is more internally for myself but been trying to live more authentically
in the last few years and trying to tear down walls that I'd put up between
my life my personal life my business you know I ran a
hostel for almost 10 years and my friends would come see the hostel they
knew what I did but they really weren't a part of my my
hostel experience. I kind of had a hostel life and my own life
back in Nashville. Being out here it's been all encompassing you know my life
is the hostel now the hostel is my life and it's been kind of exciting to
let those lines blur and just you know bring in friends and people and
let them be a part of building this hostel. You know my my hostel is filled
with murals and different artwork that a lot of friends that I've made have
like created and contributed to so it's like I walk through the hostel and it's
just little like touches from all my friends and all my community
and it's been super cool to just kind of blend
all of that together and build a business that is reflective of
kind of my character and my personality and my aesthetic
and it's been encouraging to see people so responsive and positive about
the hostel here. So I guess if there's a secret sauce it's just
try to be authentic and and I think people are drawn to that.
I know I love that topic that you brought up the blurling of the lines and
kind of just accepting it for what it is because
you know the more and more that we've done it we feel that the
the best hostels are those genuine mom and pop hostels
you know that are run by the owner who's living on site and as you said the
character of that owner you know the essence there's an
essuqua you know that's the feeling and the vibe and the special sauce that
makes it different than a you know a branded hotel or a
chain. Absolutely. So I love that you've seen that
and accepted it and a lot of times people will
talk about the opposite side if you had you know I'll hear it oh you gotta
have you gotta have separation you know you gotta keep things compartmentalized
you can't let them bleed over them and I understand that from a
health perspective but you know there's also the vantage point that
you've chosen to do this you want to be a hostel owner
or a manager and you're really going to accept that this is an experience
and a lifestyle. Yeah absolutely. The lines are blurred
you know if you really want to if you want it to be
all that it can be and be all you can be you really have to let the two things
just intersect and and be one in the moment with it so awesome
there and I you know that doesn't surprise me to hear that you're
accepted that and you're having so much positive feedback in such a great
run right now in the summer because the guests feel that and it is rare and
unique and you don't get it at the Motel 6 or the Hilton or
an Airbnb you just don't get that type of old school mom-pop feel
and that's what makes people want to repeat guests come back
they want to extend their reservation they feel that energy
and it could be contagious so yeah it is.
Thank you yeah I know I appreciate that and it's been it's been special to just
the guests we've had have been really good quality guests and you know I came
from two big hostels in Nashville that
Nashville's a party city and we weren't necessarily party hostels but
but there's partying all around and Monterey is
quiet it's a little sleepy town but it's exceptionally beautiful and there's
some really cool things to see and experience here and so our guests have
been pretty low maintenance and not not super needy
so I feel really you know fortunate to have kind of landed a hostel and
created a place where our guests are awesome like they're just
really easy and I am grateful for that I feel
like I struck what type of guest here nice well Bonner raised I mean that's
just a gorgeous spot I'm going to ask more about the geographical location but
what are the guests like that you're getting like are they authentic
backpackers are they American hotel Airbnb guests are trying out hostels for
the first time who are they it's it's a mix of families
which is a demographic that has surprised me a bit
I would say at any given time half our our business is
families families with young kids people that are
that are here and then the other half is your traditional backpackers you know
we get we get quite a few people that are traveling up and down the
California coast people that are you know coming to us from
your hostels or heading to your hostels from us we all so you know I get that
network of coastal travelers here and then being
kind of a destination a couple hours in the Bay Area we do get
tech workers and people that you know want to get out of the Bay Area and come
come to Monterey and see things here but don't necessarily want to drop the
absorbent prices on on lodging so it's it's really a good hybrid
of just kind of families and chill chill guests and then the traditional
backpackers who are the bread and butter of a
hostel right and they're they're the ones that
you know I love having an option for solo travelers
I don't ever want that to go away even though a big chunk of our business is
private room rentals now so yeah they're cool
sure the solo traveler definitely brings the vibe in
I think a lot of times the other groups that are booking are
looking for that vibe but I also always say with the families
the future backpackers of tomorrow are those little kids
absolutely so that's a great thing in the long term as we've been
trying to do that with certain locations where it is able to
have a family friendly environment but also we also try to be responsible with
certain locations where it's a you know a DJ party on the deck every night it's
like okay let's not put them in that situation but
we have started to see that same great demographic in those
locations that we have opened up to families and you know younger parents
with kids and it can be great for the business in the industry in the long
run but totally in Monterey just so people can get a
better grasp on it geographically you know tell people a bit more about like
where you're at in relation to other cities in
California and how people might be able to get there via transport like
tell people a bit about Monterey. Yeah great question so Monterey is
on the California coast in central California so it's south of San Francisco
but north of Santa Barbara and LA and southern California
so Monterey sits on the northern tip of Big Sur. Big Sur is an amazing kind of
natural region of California very dramatic coastline
Highway 1 runs along the coast so Monterey is kind of the northern access
to the region of Big Sur. Where we're at is a full of
parks there's there's a ton of state parks in the area
we're right on the Monterey Bay so Santa Cruz is on the north side of the bay
it's a beautiful area with big sand beaches we have
giant redwoods we have pretty dramatic rocky coastline here
they're surfing there's scuba diving snorkeling kind of all the the water
sports happen like right here in Monterey. Our
location is a couple blocks from the beach we're also right by the Monterey
Bay Aquarium which is a really cool nonprofit organization that works on
water conser or sea conservation here so
Monterey is a cool destination it is kind of a quiet town it's not a
nightlife city at all but it's a really beautiful place so it's great for
families it's great for you know romantic travel but
also a fun place to go with friends if you just want to backpack be outside
camp like there's just so much to do and see here
if you enjoy the outdoors and it's exceptional here so
yeah it's a cool town. Yeah really the whole PCH is such a it's great to see all
the hostels come popping up on the PCH because it makes it so much more
accessible for travelers to go to and it is such a unique and beautiful
place to experience and you have the train that goes up you know which is a
cool way you can travel by train so absolutely and it's
it's good for all of us hospitals here you know on the coast to have a good
network to send people to. I mean the last few years there'd been a
big gap between basically LA and San Francisco
you guys taking a little bit of Barbara was huge in filling that in and then
now Monterey we have San Luis Obispo so there's
yeah a great little network of hostels up and down the coast.
Listeners should come to California and drive up and down the coast it's
amazing it's so cool. Anything on the future plans for you
guys? Are you going to go back to Nash? Well we'll see what happens in Nashville but
is there any other growth values on your mind?
Well yes and no I mean right now my primary focus is on making sure that
the hostel here can stabilize and and be financially viable and
and sustainable for the foreseeable future so
there's still challenges that I have to go through.
Still you know I have a lot to prove but so far you know things here are
looking really positive. The future of national operations are
still up in the air I wish I had a more concrete answer but we just don't
really know right now until some other things kind of work through the system.
You know I've gotten my eyes set elsewhere
in a few years. I mean my dream is to open a hostel in Big Sur.
I think it's a long challenging road to do that but
there's a need for more affordable access in Big Sur
and I have some different creative ideas to figure out a way to maybe
bring the hostel there even if it's just seasonal and temporary for certain
parts of the year so we'll see if that comes to fruition but
that's that's kind of what's where my eyes are at. I want to
I want to make sure that this part of California stays accessible. People
have the ability to come here and see just how beautiful and amazing
this part of the the state is.
That's awesome. Yeah okay now from I consider you now at the 10
year mark we are a young industry and we're
unsaturated in this country so there's not that many people that have
10 years experience. It's funny as it is like when you are
talking with your friends that you know a lot of times they don't understand how
small the industry still is and how few operators within the industry would have
that much experience so I consider you a Jedi now
within the industry so you know now that you've got all that experience under
your belt I want to get some feedback from you on how
you think the existing associations are going so
you we have the North American Hostel Association which we've been going to
and we're a part of and they out of Portland with
Jim, Kenneth and his team there and then
Thea and Sydney have the Hostel in US
yeah you know network and the gathering in Denver which we also
both go to. What's your feedback on those two
networks and have you gotten any action and bookings from that
Hostel in US that the gals created? Yeah you know I don't know if I've
gotten much referral business but I'm sure that I have. I should
track that a little more specifically but more broadly I'm really excited for
the future of Hostel in North America. Just the two conferences you
mentioned over the last year I went to and frankly just seeing peers
people that are kind of in a similar phase of life
deciding to run and operate hostels and invest their
creativity and their their life into this industry gives me a lot of
like hope and excitement for the future of hostels.
Yeah there's maybe not a ton of people in our industry that have
been doing this 10 plus years but there's a lot of young energy coming
into Hostel and a lot of new operators and owners so I don't know I feel
really excited about the future of this industry.
It's been nice just having on a personal level just having connections to
other hostel operators. There's maybe what 200 hostels in North America is
that kind of the estimate like there's not many other people out there that do
a similar to exact same job as you know me there's about 200 of us so just
having that connection of people that know what we do and kind of know what's
involved is meaningful but then I also feel a good
sense of renewal and energy in the hostel industry
and a desire for all of us to keep creating hostels that are awesome and
unique and really changing the reputation of hostels.
So I'm stoked on the hosteling community I love what
Hostling.us is doing and Neha is doing so yeah I'm I'm jazzed to see what comes
of it all but I feel very encouraged by the people that I've met and the other
hostel operators that I've had the pleasure of working alongside and
getting to know.
Absolutely and encouragement to everyone listening to
join those associations and groups because as Ryan said the connections that
you can make can really be profound and an amazing experience and it's always a
great time but I'm excited also to see what's
created we've even talked about maybe the not in any way trying to create an
association but just having like a Pacific Coast highway
California collective of hostel affiliates right yeah with a landing
page where we're all we're all out there yeah.
Well I need a good map of all the hostels in California because I do I guess it
asks like what hostel should I go stay at you know as I go up and down the coast
so yeah we need you know there's always a million things we
hostel operators need to do but it'd be great to have like a map or
something to share yeah of course but yeah.
Hey come on go to the hostel road trip website publish a new map
where you can have an interactive map of well it's all the hostels that uh
have participated so but we hope to get everybody on there yeah that done episode
so um awesome well yeah thank you so much for
joining yeah great to hear your uh I didn't get to come in earlier but
I love your outlook on hostling and you know there's a reason why host is in
the word hostel you know because it's about the host and
like you said being authentic um you know it's like your host and we always
act like you're hosting your best friends from coming in and
yeah people want that personal experience because that's when people put down
their guard and connect and make friends and you know that's where the magic
happens so it sounds like you're doing it right and uh yeah that's awesome to
hear keep it going thanks thanks guys I appreciate it