hosteling

If you have the least inkling that hosteling is what you want to do - go.

Seasoned hostelers will tell you that flexibility is the key to enjoying hosteling.

LEAD: Hosteling is a frame of mind, an alternative psychology of travel.

HOSTELING used to be so easy.

Santa Marta The Dreamer Hostel It is now a Hosteling International hostel in only its 4th or 5th year.

"Hosteling is not for a person who expects privacy," says Ms. Macomber, president of the Yankee Council of American Youth Hostels, with about 3,000 members in Connecticut, western Massachusetts and Vermont.

"They're absolutely getting better," said Mark Vidalin, marketing director for Hostelling International USA, a nonprofit hostel organization based in Silver Spring, Md. "There's been a recognition that hosteling had reached critical mass and gone beyond just cheap places to stay."