Based on my experience of traveling to Korea (4 times in this lifetime and 3 trips this year alone), hotels are about USD200 and above a night. If you’re traveling with a partner, then you have someone to split the bill with.
For single travelers or for those on budget, a comfortable, safe and clean place to stay with a convenient location to boot may be more ideal. This category of travelers would rather spend their Korean won on shopping, food or for traveling to the many attractions within this beautiful country than for a hotel room.
For this category, hostels, or more commonly known as ‘guesthouse’ are best.
Seoul is generally safe and very, very clean. At the KTO building earlier this week, I picked up some helpful brochures for my reference and one of the really valuable ones is this; a Guest House List of hostels/guest houses in the district of Mapo-gu (gu = district) where several universities and government buildings are located. Mapo is well known for the Hongdae club district around Hongik University.
Consequently, the vibe here is lively and there are many eateries, shopping and easy transportation available.
I have not stayed at any of these Guest Houses before so do check them out on TripAdvisor, etc before making your bookings. If you have any guest houses in Seoul to recommend that is not in this list, do leave me a comment below! I’ll love to hear from you. 🙂
*List is arranged alphabetically:
Here’s a copy of the useful subway map of Seoul. Drop me a comment if you need a high-res copy! 🙂
Last but not least, this list of guest houses are ‘somewhat approved’ by KTO and as per the last point on this page below – “This map introduces guest houses registered with the “Foreign Tourist City Lodging Business” as of Oct 22nd, 2012.
*This wonderful experience was a part of our Asian On Air itinerary during our media familiarization trip organized by KTO Malaysia and Korean Air in October 2013.
Stay tuned as I’ll update more on my trip over the next few weeks.
For other travel adventures, you can visit my travel page –> https://www.rebeccasaw.com/travel/
the guesthouses sound good… it’ll be interesting to find out if there might also be good apartments for short-term rent like in some other countries, where tourists can rent an entire apartment for really low prices for three or four days 😀
Useful list!
I won’t mind a hostel/guest house myself if I’m traveling with friends or on my own. Less “formal”. But the other half would prefer a hotel room
Thanks for the list! And it’s from a reputable source too. I appreciate it.
need to open a shop at mapo-gu. and sell only one dish. mapo tofu. no rice. no water. no soju. only fricking mapotofu
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