At this point there aren’t a ton of hostels in Los Angeles, but if the worldwide trend continues here, it won’t be long before more open their doors. Many Americans are still unfamiliar with the concept of hostels, but that is definitely changing. The other major trend on the worldwide hostels scene is that more hostels are adding more private rooms to their dorm setups, and this will definitely help more Americans get on board.
When you are searching for hostels you’ll discover that virtually every booking site has the exact same hostels at the exact same prices. In a way this is good, since it means it’s almost impossible to get ripped off when booking a hostel. But this might also make people think all the sites are otherwise the same, even though they aren’t.
Some hostel-booking sites have helpful maps of the area and others have good travel guide information that helps first-time visitors decide which parts of the city are best to stay in. You can’t trust all the boastful claims about each hostel because they are usually written by the hostel itself (or at least someone working there, probably not the building doing the writing). But the hostel-booking sites do each add value so you should check them out and decide which appeals to you.
For your convenience, here are some of the major hostel-booking sites that cover Los Angeles:
BootsnAll
HostelBookers
HostelsClub
HostelWorld
TheBestHostels