Hosted in Hinglish | 1.5 Hours

About the workshop

It’s not uncommon for those who travel the world to want to open a home away from home for other travellers. Backpacker hostels are the perfect places to swap travel stories with others and build a life around independent travel. But it involves hard work and careful planning to ensure that the experience doesn’t turn into a nightmare. Here’s what you will learn in this workshop 

• Introduction: How I started Madpackers hostels and what we’ve been up to for the past few years 
  
  
• 5 Questions to ask yourself before you start a hostel
  
  
• How to find the right property and location
  
  
• Arranging funds and financing your dream
  
  
• How to negotiate the lease terms
  
  
• Setting up your hostel
  – Inventory allocation
  – Look and feel of the property
  – Interior design
  – Rooms, beds and bunks including the right materials, linen etc.
  – Common areas and front desk
  – Kitchen and cafe
  – Rooftop/outdoor areas

• How to build the right team
  
  
• Figuring out the right technology stack for smooth ops
  
  
• Effective marketing and distribution across all booking and discovery channels
  
  
• Hosting your first travellers (yay!)

About the host

Mayank Sahai is the co-founder and head of community at Madpackers, one of India’s formative and most awarded backpacker hostels and youth travel brands. Committing to a life on the road after quitting his fancy expat job, Mayank spent almost a year backpacking and hitchhiking before deciding to start his first backpacker hostel. 

Today, Madpackers has expanded to five Indian locations – Delhi, Agra, Pushkar, Manali and Amritsar.

You can find Madpackers on Instagram as ‘madpackershostels’.

What you should carry along

A notepad and pen