Just heard that hostels in Europe used to book through fax machines until like 2010

I was reading an old travel forum from 2009 and someone mentioned faxing a hostel in Prague to reserve a bed... I checked and apparently that was just how it worked back then. Can you imagine waiting days for a reply instead of just clicking book on Hostelworld? Has anyone here actually done that back in the day?

2 comments

2 Comments

ninas7012d ago

Didn't do it myself but my buddy faxed a hostel in Rome and got no reply for a week.

olivia_chen3512d ago

Faxing in 2024 is so wild it almost loops back around to being impressive. Like, your buddy probably had to buy a prepaid phone card and find a public fax machine just to get ghosted for a week. At that point you might as well send a letter by carrier pigeon, at least you'd know it got there. Rome hostels are probably still using the same fax machine from 1998 that's buried under a stack of paperwork. Honestly, getting no reply for a week on a fax is basically a yes in modern time travel terms.