hostelworld.com — domain analysis
hostelworld.com describes itself as "Online confirmed bookings for backpacker hostels around the world. City guides, sightseeing, entertainment and backpacking information for hostels and backpacker tours around the…". It is built on Nuxt, registered in 1999, served from Kansas City, United States. It has a valid HTTPS certificate, 4 of 6 common security headers, 3 tracking scripts.
What is hostelworld.com about?
The words appearing most often on the homepage, excluding common filler, are
a rough indication of subject matter rather than a description of the business:
- people ×6
- chat ×6
- travellers ×6
- hostel ×6
- find ×6
- meet ×4
- city ×4
- travel ×4
- guide ×4
- join ×3
Does hostelworld.com publish the usual trust pages?
All four of the pages a established business normally publishes were found:
about, contact, privacy and terms.
These were checked at conventional paths only, so a site using different URLs may
publish them elsewhere.
How does hostelworld.com compare with other domains analysed here?
Measured against the 77 domains in this index. This is a
small, self-selected sample — the domains people happened to look up — not a
representative sample of the web.
| Response time | Faster than 74% of them (median 662ms) |
|---|---|
| Security headers | More than 89% of them |
| Domain age | Older than 79% of them |
Related domains in this index
Analysed domains sharing the same network (AS396982 Google LLC):
Sharing a network means sharing a host or CDN. It implies nothing about a
relationship between the sites themselves.
Analysed domains built on a similar stack:
- adoptnews.com
- bootbarn.com
- desinx.com
- dioguinho.com
- fumbleboard.com
- gbnews.com
- haber7.com
- infodost.com
Other analysed domains served from the same country:
- iana.org
- canenews.com
- facturasgas.com
- foxnewspaper.com
- newsiza.com
- newsmoral.com
- newspuma.com
- newstwice.com
When was hostelworld.com registered?
hostelworld.com was registered on 12 May 1999, which makes it about 27 years old.
A registration this old means the domain has been renewed repeatedly, which costs money every year and is not something abandoned or disposable projects tend to do.
The registrar of record is EuroDNS S.A..
Registration runs until 12 May 2027.
The domain carries 1 registry lock, which blocks unauthorised transfer or deletion.
| Registered | 12 May 1999 |
|---|---|
| Expires | 12 May 2027 |
| Registrar | EuroDNS S.A. |
| Registry status | client transfer prohibited |
Where is hostelworld.com hosted?
The first address resolves to infrastructure in Kansas City, United States.
The network is operated by Google Cloud (AS396982 Google LLC).
Hosting location describes where the responding server sits, not where the business is. A CDN will report its nearest edge rather than the origin.
What is hostelworld.com running on?
hostelworld.com exposes 4 identifiable technologies: Nuxt, Vue, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager.
The build output indicates a server-rendered JavaScript framework, which means the HTML served to crawlers is generated ahead of time rather than assembled in the browser.
Visitor tracking is present (Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager), so this homepage is not cookie-free.
- Nuxt
- Vue
- Google Analytics
- Google Tag Manager
How does the homepage respond?
The server answered with HTTP 200 over
HTTPS.
At 448ms to first byte this response is unremarkable for a homepage measured from a single European location.
The HTML weighs 293KB, which is ordinary for a homepage.
The HTML is compressed with gzip.
| Server header | Google Frontend |
|---|---|
| Compression | gzip |
| Page size | 300,181 bytes |
| Declared language | en |
| Mobile viewport | declared |
What does the homepage say about itself?
The title is 56 characters, inside the range that displays without truncation.
The meta description is 185 characters and will be cut short in most result layouts.
All 82 images on the homepage have alt attributes.
| Title | Hostels Worldwide – Online Bookings, Ratings and Reviews (56 chars) |
|---|---|
| Meta description | Online confirmed bookings for backpacker hostels around the world. City guides, sightseeing, entertainment and backpacking information for hostels and backpacker tours around the world. (185 chars) |
| H1 | Meet your people. (1 on the page) |
| Canonical | https://www.hostelworld.com/ |
| Open Graph title | Hostels Worldwide – Online Bookings, Ratings and Reviews |
| Headings / images | 8 H2s, 82 images (0 without alt text) |
Is hostelworld.com served over a valid certificate?
The HTTPS certificate is issued by GlobalSign nv-sa and is
valid until 2026-12-19, which is 75 days from the date of this check. It covers
8 hostnames.
- www.hostelworld.com
- *.hostelworld.com
- api.m.hostelworld.com
- url5623.hostelworld.com
- url3539.m.email.hostelworld.com
- url6910.p.email.hostelworld.com
- url1108.t.email.hostelworld.com
- hostelworld.com
The certificate has 75 days left to run.
Which security headers does it set?
4 of 6 are set (HSTS, Content Security Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options). Absent: Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy.
| Header | Set | Value |
|---|---|---|
| HSTS | yes | max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains |
| Content Security Policy | yes | base-uri none; font-src self https: data:; form-action self https://www.facebook.com; frame-ancestors self; object-src n |
| X-Content-Type-Options | yes | nosniff |
| X-Frame-Options | yes | SAMEORIGIN |
| Referrer-Policy | no | — |
| Permissions-Policy | no | — |
How is DNS configured for hostelworld.com?
| IP addresses | 34.54.2.225 |
|---|---|
| Reverse DNS | 225.2.54.34.bc.googleusercontent.com |
| Name servers | ns-cloud-d2.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-d1.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-d4.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-d3.googledomains.com |
| Mail (MX) | hostelworld-com.mail.protection.outlook.com (pri 10) |
| SPF | v=spf1 mx a:smtp.europe.secureserver.net include:spfip.hostelworld.com include:mail.zendesk.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:servers.mcsv.net ?include:trustpilotservice.com include:spf.byway.it -all |
| TXT records | 28 |
hostelworld.com resolves to a single address, so there is no DNS-level redundancy.
Mail is handled by 1 exchanger.
An SPF record is published, giving receiving servers a rule for which hosts may send as this domain.
Reverse DNS resolves to 225.2.54.34.bc.googleusercontent.com, which usually names the hosting provider.
Who runs DNS and mail for hostelworld.com?
DNS is operated by Google Cloud DNS rather than self-hosted name servers.
Mail is handled by Microsoft 365.
No AAAA records are published, so the site is reachable over IPv4 only.
What else is worth noting about hostelworld.com?
3 of 3 externally hosted scripts carry no subresource integrity hash. If one of those hosts were compromised, the replacement script would run with full access to the page.
1 email address appears in the homepage markup, where address-harvesting crawlers will find it.
Can hostelworld.com be spoofed in email?
DMARC is set to quarantine, so mail failing authentication is sent to spam rather than the inbox.
CAA records restrict certificate issuance to 6 named authorities (issue certainly.com, issue digicert.com, issue globalsign.com, issue amazon.com), so no other CA should be able to issue for this domain.
The zone is not DNSSEC-signed. That is still the norm for most domains, but it means DNS answers cannot be cryptographically verified.
What does robots.txt allow?
robots.txt is 1,119 bytes and names
3 user-agent groups.
It does not blanket-disallow general crawlers.
Sitemaps declared:
- https://www.hostelworld.com/sitemap-index.xml
AI crawler policy
robots.txt names no AI crawlers specifically, so they fall under whatever rule
applies to User-agent: *.
What structured data does the homepage publish?
- WebSite
- SearchAction
- EntryPoint
- WebPage
- ReadAction
- Organization
- SoftwareApplication
- MobileApplication
- AggregateRating
- Offer
The homepage publishes 10 structured data types: WebSite, SearchAction, EntryPoint, WebPage, ReadAction, Organization, SoftwareApplication, MobileApplication, AggregateRating, Offer.
What does hostelworld.com load from third parties?
The homepage pulls resources from 9 third-party hosts (a.hwstatic.com, analytics.ahrefs.com, cdn.segment.com, consent.trustarc.com, fonts.gstatic.com, googletagmanager.com). Each one sees the visitor IP and user agent on every page load.
4 cookies are set before any interaction (i18n_redirected, currency, optimizely-aid, recentSearches).
The page links or refers to X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
| Cookie | Secure | HttpOnly | SameSite |
|---|---|---|---|
| i18n_redirected | yes | no | lax |
| currency | yes | no | strict |
| optimizely-aid | yes | no | lax |
| recentSearches | yes | no | strict |
Does hostelworld.com settle on one address?
Plain HTTP redirects to HTTPS, so visitors who type the bare address still land on the secure version.
Both hostelworld.com and www.hostelworld.com answer with 200 and neither redirects to the other. Search engines therefore see two complete copies of the site, and link equity is split between them unless a canonical tag resolves it.
How easily can hostelworld.com be crawled?
A sitemap index is served at https://www.hostelworld.com/sitemap-index.xml listing 32 entries.
A deliberately invalid URL returns HTTP 200 rather than 404. That is a soft 404: every mistyped or stale link becomes an indexable page, which inflates the site with duplicates.
What tracking does hostelworld.com run?
3 tracking scripts detected: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Segment.
No consent management platform was detected alongside them. Where GDPR or the ePrivacy Directive applies, analytics and advertising scripts generally need consent before they load.
How does hostelworld.com look when shared?
All five social preview tags are present, so links shared to social platforms and chat apps will render with a title, description and image.
The page declares 20 hreflang alternates (en, x-default, fr, de, es, it, pt, pt-br, sv, pl, fi, da), so it targets more than one language or region.
How are images, fonts and scripts handled?
82 images on the homepage, 76 of them lazy-loaded (93%).
All image references use JPEG, PNG or GIF. WebP or AVIF typically cut image weight substantially at the same visual quality.
Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which means every page view also contacts Google. Self-hosting removes that dependency.
The page pulls 3 external stylesheets and 5 external scripts, with 4 carrying defer or async.
Is hostelworld.com accessible and current?
The page uses 6 landmark elements and 118 ARIA attributes.
No skip-to-content link was found, which keyboard users rely on to bypass navigation.
The visible copyright notice reads 1999, 27 years behind the current year, which usually indicates the site is not actively maintained.
Can search engines index hostelworld.com?
Nothing on the homepage prevents indexing: no noindex is set in the robots meta tag or the X-Robots-Tag header.
The homepage carries 67 internal and 20 external links across 10 outside hosts.
Visible text is only 1.7% of the HTML, which indicates the page is assembled in the browser rather than served as content.
How is hostelworld.com delivered?
No Cache-Control header is sent for the HTML, so caching behaviour is left to browser defaults.
HTTP/3 is advertised via alt-svc, so modern browsers will upgrade to QUIC after the first visit.
A web app manifest is declared, so the site is installable as a progressive web app.
The TLS certificate also covers 6 subdomains: www.hostelworld.com, api.m.hostelworld.com, url5623.hostelworld.com, url3539.m.email.hostelworld.com, url6910.p.email.hostelworld.com, url1108.t.email.hostelworld.com.
- www.hostelworld.com
- api.m.hostelworld.com
- url5623.hostelworld.com
- url3539.m.email.hostelworld.com
- url6910.p.email.hostelworld.com
- url1108.t.email.hostelworld.com
Frequently asked questions
Does hostelworld.com set the usual HTTP security headers?
It sets 4 of 6. The ones not present are: Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy.
Does hostelworld.com allow AI crawlers?
robots.txt names no AI crawler specifically, so they fall under the wildcard rule, which does not disallow them.
What is hostelworld.com built with?
The homepage exposes these fingerprints: Nuxt, Vue, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager. A site behind a CDN or rendered server-side may use more than it reveals.
Where does this data come from?
Every figure was measured by our own server on 5 October 2026: DNS lookups, one HTTPS request to the homepage, a TLS handshake and a request for robots.txt. No third-party SEO API is involved.
Is any of this traffic or authority data?
No. Traffic, authority and ranking figures cannot be measured by inspecting a domain, only modelled. Everything here is a direct observation.
I own hostelworld.com and want this page removed.
Ask through the contact page on this site, from an address at the domain, and the report will be taken down. It only ever shows what the domain already serves publicly.
Analysed 5 October 2026.
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