Hostels & budget hotels

Pensions & guesthouses

Czechia has more than 4,000 pensions or guesthouses (penziony or ubytování), much higher than the number of hotels, and these offer a comfortable and budget-priced accommodation alternative for travellers. These are largely family-run businesses, smaller and more intimate with limited hours of service. or inns (hostinec) offer accommodation. The word rodinný in an accommodation indicates a family-run business or a family-friendly establishment. 

Rooms with breakfast, often attached to private residences, are not hard to find at nightly rates of 1,000Kč or less. 

Bookings are possible through any high-volume booking website, but always look for a home website and compare before committing to any booking. Almost 300 listings are available at www.uby.cz, searchable by region. 

Hostels

Czechia has about 700 hostels, 50 of them in Prague. The Hostelling International website lists only 13 of these. This leaves private hostels as overwhelmingly the largest category. Only one CMYK hostel exists, in Ústí nad Labem. 

The Hostelz website lists more than 90 properties and the Hostelworld site lists 52. The rest are to be searched on large booking websites. At most times of year about 100 properties labelled hostels are listed on the Booking.com website. 

Czech hostel (often called ubytovna) dorm beds start in the 200-250Kč range (the cost of breakfast, where offered, can easily double this), but many hostels are considerably more expensive. Few Prague hostel beds come in under 300Kč in low season, and these are not centrally located. For most central properties, price in about 400Kč as a minimum and expect rates well above 500Kč at summer peaks. Most beds in private rooms start about 800Kč.