On bloggers and business
So remember how we hoped not to meet any bloggers/instagrammers/influencers along the way? Well, it turned out to be worse than that. We accidently ended up staying in the hostel run by one.
It is half funny, half sad, half incredibely painful to watch (yes, I know there has been three halves there, but this experience sums up to more than 100%).
For once, Tadzik was very wrong about the place. Jerico, the town we are in is kind of far - 4 hours from Medellin along the bumpy mountain roads. It is not anywhere in Lonely Planet, so Tadzik thought we would probably meet like-minded people here as it takes effort and research to get here. Oh, how wrong was he.
Remoteness means that there are indeed few travellers. However, the people running this hostel have a clear ambition to change that. They are already converting a farm into some some eco lodge yoga retreat thing, even though the hostel they are running already is mainly occupied by people who volonteer to help them build the lodge. Oh, and the place itself is run entirely by volonteers who hang around there about a week, so obviously nobody gives a fuck. They have an ambition to build a big backpacker getaway, and yet they are unable to serve a coffee in the morning (as they claim they would on every door). Nor can they simply ask their only guests for feedback instead of planning a big campaign to lure bloggers to promote the place. Oh, and the co-owner (or owner's girlfriend, we are not sure), who is an English "veggie travelling teacher" (which is not even me mocking her as this is her Instagram handle...) spends days just lecturing her volonteers about travel and pretty much everything else. And discussing how they only need to respond to the most recent reviews on booking.com because nobody reads more than 10 pages - probably not something you should be doing in front of your guests. Well, I guess being a blogger does not necesarily translate to skills needed to run a hostel.
This place represents all that is upseting about our times - more focus on delusional Instagram photoshoped life than actually doing something well and enjoying it. The saddest part is, that the hostel could actually be a nice place, if only the right kind of people were behind it.
#travelpricks #hatersgonnahate