studentsineurope

Hostel Booking on Your iPhone

Forget booking a hostel or hotel online. Book on your iPhone. Thanks to a new app called Hostel Hero, tech-savvy backpackers can book on the go using on their iPhones and iPod Touches!

Now, here is where I must admit that I don’t have an iPhone. Or a Blackberry. Or an iPod Touch. But I admire them and will someday probably get one. So for now, those of you who — unlike me — do have an iPhone can use this uberconvenient, oh and did I mention FREE, app!

One very nice feature of Hostel Hero is that many of the features work offline, which means that even if you aren’t connected to the internet, you can still browse through hostels, then make the booking the next time you hit a Wifi hotspot. Imagine this: rather than sitting at some grotty hostel computer waiting for the slow internet to connect through dozens of viruses, you’re lounging on the beach in Thailand, searching for your next night’s stay. As a travel nerd, this sounds absolutely fabulous to me!

Hostel Hero partners with Hostelworld to feature hundreds of hostels and budget hotels in some 150 countries, and it works on both iPhone and iPod Touch. You download the hostel info from your favorite countries or upcoming destinations, which allows you to browse them offline anytime you want – hence the beach scenario. The app also has this funky feature that allows you to ring any of the listed hostels without emailing or dialing — so convenient. And Hostel Hero employs Google Maps to give you accurate directions to the hostel once you’ve booked, which means no more stumbling through alleyways looking at blurry printed maps in a foreign language. Sweet!

The only downside to using Hostel Hero is that you will pay a small fee for the booking if you decide to make a reservation. But if time is money to you, then that extra hour of sightseeing you’ll have from not sitting at the computer terminal waiting for pages to load is totally worthwhile. You can also pay using all major credit cards and many world currencies.

This may just be enough to get me to buy an iPhone!