[Tim Uden]

I'm currently editing next year's edition of the BUG Australia guidebook and there are a few hostels that need reviewing.

Our aim is to review every hostel in each destination, however there are a few 'hostile hostels' who won't let the current BUG reviewers in to review their hostels.

Some of these hostels are pretty crappy, but others are actually quite good but the owners won't accept even the slightest criticism.

In order to review these for next year's book, I'll need someone who can stay a night in each place, fill out a hostel review form and write an honest review that we can include on the BUG website and in our guidebook.

If you're currently travelling along Australia's east coast and you would like us to pay you to stay in around five hostels, contact me at tuden@bugeurope.com.

I'm also looking for someone travelling along the West Coast who can review hostels in Kununurra, Broome, Karratha, Port Hedland, Exmouth and Coral Bay.

[musicdisciple]

I just wanted to say don't be put off when Tim calls the hostels "hostile". I stayed in a hostel in Rome that was on the hostile list and it was actually a pretty nice place. The owner was really strict about some rules but as long as you didn't try to cook after 11 and checked out on time in the morning it was fine.

[Tim Uden]

Just because a hostel is on BUG's 'hostile hostel' list doesn't mean that it is a bad hostel. Almost half the hostels on this list are actually quite nice but the management are hostile to BUG because of reviews that have been written by BUG reviewers or by other travellers. This does not mean that the management will be hostile to the average traveller and in many cases the managers of these hostels provide first class customer service.

By reviewing 'hostile hostels' anonymously we are able to provide a more accurate impression of how a traveller will enjoy their stay. This also gives us an opportunity to review hostels that we may not otherwise have the opportunity to review.

[christopher hunter]

hello tim where can one get to your hostile hostel list i love oxymorons and is there abigger one considering the root from latin hostile is bad hospitality and hostel is the good host so if they are hostile toyour organisation perhaps that needs to be addressed .the hostile hostellers are still in business and how would they ever know a pax was from bug? [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Tim Uden]

BUG's "hostile hostel" list is not published and is only available to people working for BUG. The reason for this is making the list public could create a prejudice against a good hostel.

There are many good hostels on this list, but the management of some of these places are over defensive when it comes to people writing reviews of their establishment. However these hostels are often perfectly adequate and many many travellers find that the managers of these hostels are excellent hosts.

An official BUG reviewer will normally introduce themselves and ask to look around and write a review and rate the hostel. This way we can learn about aspects of the hostel that we may not be able to see as a regular guest and it also enables us to see a lot of hostels within a relatively short time.

Occassionally (around 1% of the time) a hostel will refuse to allow a BUG reviewer into the hostel and in these cases we either stay in this hostel or have a hostile hostel reviewer stay there and write a review.

Our aim is to have regularly updated BUG reviews of every hostel in each destination that we cover. The only way to do this is to have a "hostile hostel" reviewer visit hostels a couple of months after the official BUG reviewer has tried to review them.

Hostel reviews written by BUG hostel reviewers are different to those written by travellers. Currently we have around 8,000 reviews written by travellers and a little over 1,000 official reviews written by BUG hostel reviewers. Most of the reviews written by BUG reviewers are on the BUG Australia and BUG Pacific websites but we will be adding over 100 new BUG reviews to the BUG Europe site in the next month or so and we will be reviewing hundreds more European hostels early next year.