Balearics hosts the back packers

05/07/2013 00:00

Palma.Prices at the youth hostel at No. 13 Calle Costa Brava in the Playa de Palma range from 9.5 to 14.5 euros per night including breakfast. Although these might look like the last minute offers of a tourist industry desperate for custom in mid summer, they in fact reflect the costs of youth hostelling in the low and high holiday seasons on Majorca.

There is a second youth hostel La Victoria in Alcudia and a third at No. 2, Plaça Josep Maria Quadrado in Palma's historic centre.
The development in youth hostelling on Majorca also comes in the wake of the so-called couch surfer movement, a term coined in 2004 and which refers to travellers who stay in private houses in particular round-the-world stop-off points without paying up-front. This system of overnight stays had become particularly popular with the 20 to 30 age group.

Although the youth hostels, by virtue of terminology, suggest that it is the young who are catered for, their doors are in fact open to members of the public from all walks of life.

Indeed, pensioners are often seen going in and out of the doors at the hostel on the Playa de Palma.
As in the case of couch surfing, youth hostellers need to be accustomed to sharing rooms with strangers of different nationalities. Prices in Palma are cheaper than Rome or Paris.