The open balcony of a hostel featured in a photo in "Trends" magazine offers guests a fantastic view of mountain peaks emerging through the clouds. [Photo:Trends.com.cn]

If luxury hotels in Taiwan can be compared to a sumptuous feast, then the thousands of small hostels scattered across the island are a comfortable and homey meal full of warmth and personal appeal. Such is how reporters from the travel magazine "Trends" describe their stays in a variety of hostels during a media tour of Taiwan in November.

The island has seen a steady increase in the number of visitors since it opened to individual tourists from two mainland cities last April. This promotinal policy also has boosted tourism-related industries, especially the hotel and hostel business.

The word "hostels" in mainland tourist cities usually generates an image of a large house whose family members rent out extra guest bedrooms. But in Taiwan, hostels are by no means amateur business affairs, according to "Trends."

Tourists have an array of choices when it comes to choosing a hostel. There are Victorian villas with rooms that offer unobstructed mountain or ocean views, stone houses where local ethnic minorities live, and northern European-style wood cabins, to name a few. What's more, most rooms are immaculate, offer abundant supplies of toiletries, and more often than not feature artistic or vintage decorations, according to the hostel's theme.

According to relevant regulations, a family hostel should have five to 15 guestrooms, and services should be on par with those of commercial hotels. As a result, family hostels are not as economical as tourists usually expect them to be, with the price of a double room ranging from 400 yuan-1,000 yuan a night, and the most upscale rooms running as high as 5,000 yuan a night. A wooden cabin large enough for a four-member family usually costs 1,000 yuan a night, but reservations must be made at least a week in advance.

Most tourists choose to stay in hostels because they offer a more comfortable and relaxing experience than most hotels. The living room of a hostel is often the core of the establishment. It is where guests eat home-cooked meals and talk with other visitors or the hostel owners. There is usually a comfortable sofa to rest on and magazines to thumb through. Certain hostels also organize excursions, provide local tour guides and hold bonfire parties on festive occasions.

The easiest way to locate the hostel of your dreams is to check guest comments on the establishment's website or look through its online message board. If both are filled with grateful words and sweet memories, then your choice will unlikely be a wrong one.

Family hostels began to sprout up near Taiwan's scenic areas in the 1980s when the two-day weekend was introduced. Supported by the government's encouragement for young people to return to their home cities to seek employment or start businesses, large numbers of architects, art designers and teachers joined the tide and opened their homes as hostels.