Life

Next Time You Visit Israel, Try This ‘Boutique’ Hostel For Only $35

A Selina hostel locations’ co-working space. Image by Agustin Munoz

By Dotan Levy February 5, 2019

Hospitality company Selina Ltd. will be opening the first of several Tel Aviv locations in the summer of 2019, according to the head of Selina Israel, Yossi Mautner.

Established in 2014 in Panama by Israel-born Rafael Museri and Daniel Rudasevski, Selina currently has 44 locations in central America, South America, and Portugal. The company has raised $95 million to date, according to Pitchbook data, from investors including WeWork’s Adam Neumann, and Gigi Levy Weiss, co-founder of social gaming company Playtika and the former CEO of online gambling firm 888 Holdings PLC.

Each Selina hostel offers a co-working space, a free-to-use kitchen, a library, a movie theater, a gym, and also local attractions such as curated tours. The chain, which currently offers 10,000 beds worldwide, aims to reach 100,000 by 2022, Mautner said in an interview with Calcalist last week.

In Israel, Selena began operating last year when it signed a deal for three Templar buildings in Tel Aviv, on the edges of the trendy neighborhoods Neve Tzedek and Florentine, Mautner said. The location, which is expected to open later this year, will span 1,500 square meters and offer 145 beds.

The company is finalizing a deal for its second Tel Aviv location, near the Levinsky Market in South Tel Aviv, according to Mautner. The second location will span 3,000 meters and contain 250 beds, and is expected to open in the summer of 2020, he said.

A bed in a shared room in one of Selina’s Tel Aviv locations will set visitors back $35, while standard double rooms at start at $200 per night, and suites at $400 per night.

Selina plans to open around 15 locations throughout Israel over the next five years, which will amount to approximately 15,000 beds, Mautner said. The company is currently negotiating a location near the Sea of Galilee and is also looking at locations in Jerusalem, Eilat, and Mitzpe Ramon.

This story originally appeared in C-Tech, Calcalist’s English site, on February 4, 2019.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO