Budget Hotels & Hostels in Groningen

Groningen isn’t Amsterdam. It has no hostels stacked three to a block, which is exactly why the couple of good budget beds it does have are worth knowing by name. This is a bike-and-beer city built for students rather than backpackers, so the cheap sleeps that exist here have earned their keep. Skip the generic “hotel” search and go straight for these.

The Two Names You Actually Need

Ask any local where to crash cheap and you’ll get one of two answers: Simplon Jongerenhotel or CityHub. Groningen’s budget scene is thin but genuinely good, and the two places suit completely different moods. One puts you in a converted venue full of gig posters and secondhand sofas; the other drops you into a chrome pod a couple of minutes from the trains. Neither will make you homesick for a proper hotel, and both will save you real money in a city where a mid-range double can still run €110–140 a night in high season.

Simplon: Bunk Beds with a Backstage Pass

Simplon Jongerenhotel sits on Boterdiepstraatweg, tucked into the same sprawling cultural complex as De Simplon, one of the city’s best mid-size music venues, the kind of room where you’ll catch a band three years before they get big. That matters: your hostel bar might literally be the venue’s café, and your fellow guests are as likely to be touring musicians and festival crew as ordinary travellers. It’s about a 10–15 minute cycle (or a longer walk) north of the centre, past the green sprawl of Noorderplantsoen, which keeps it a touch removed from the Grote Markt chaos. That’s a plus if you actually want to sleep.

This is the standard no-nonsense hostel setup: dorm beds with mixed and female-only choices, a small number of private rooms for pairs, shared bathrooms, a communal kitchen, lockers, and a laundry room that has rescued more than one festival-goer's last clean shirt. A dorm bed usually costs somewhere in the €25–38 range, depending on the season and how early you book. Private rooms cost more but still come in cheaper than most hotels in the city. Breakfast isn't automatically included, so check when you book. Finding out hungry at 8am that bread, cheese and coffee cost extra is a poor start to the day.

CityHub: Sleep in a Pod, Wake Up by the Trains

If Simplon is shared-kitchen bohemia, CityHub Groningen is its efficient, design-minded cousin. It belongs to a small Dutch chain with siblings in other cities, and it’s built around private sleeping “hubs”: pod-style rooms with a proper bed, a curtain or door for privacy, a locker, charging points, and just enough room to swing a rucksack. Bathrooms are shared and check-in is largely self-service via kiosk or app, so there’s no reception fuss at 2am if your train from Schiphol was delayed.

Location is the real selling point. It sits right by Groningen Hoofdstation, so if you’re arriving late, catching an early train onward, or just don’t fancy wrestling a suitcase over cobbles, this is your spot. You give up the chatty vibe of a classic hostel in return for privacy and convenience. At roughly €60–90 a night for a hub, it costs more than a Simplon dorm bed but often less than a hotel single, and you get an actual door. Good for solo travellers, digital nomads, or anyone who wants budget prices without bunk-bed politics.

When to Book (and When Not To)

Cheap accommodation in Groningen disappears quickly around a handful of dates you can plan for. Eurosonic Noorderslag, held in mid-January as Europe's showcase festival for new music, essentially takes over every venue in town, including Simplon's own stage, and fills both hostels and most hotels months ahead. The other two risky stretches are King’s Day (27 April) and the start of the academic year in early September, when tens of thousands of incoming students arrive with their parents in search of temporary beds. Outside these periods, and away from summer's Bommen Berend and the various street-festival weekends, booking Simplon or CityHub a week or two in advance is usually no problem, and rates drop noticeably during the quieter months of November through February.

The Cheaper-Still Alternatives

• Camping Stadspark: a genuine, seasonal campsite inside Stadspark, an easy cycle or bus ride from the centre. If you’ve got a tent or a campervan, or don’t mind renting a basic cabin, this is the rock-bottom option, running roughly April to October.
• Student sublets and Airbnb: with two universities in town (RUG and Hanze), short-term student rooms occasionally surface on local housing boards and Airbnb, especially outside term time. Prices swing wildly, so treat it as a gamble rather than a plan, but it’s worth a scan if you’re staying a week or more.
• The Student Hotel: not quite a hostel and not bargain-basement either, but its “smart room” tier sometimes undercuts traditional hotels while offering hostel-adjacent extras like communal workspaces and a lively downstairs café. Compare prices before you write it off.

Hostel Etiquette, Groningen-Style

A few local truths that will save you grief. First: lock your bike properly, both wheels and frame if you can. This is one of the most bike-dense cities on earth, and casual theft of unlocked or poorly locked bikes is a genuine local sport. Most hostels have bike storage; use it. Second, quiet hours are taken seriously in shared dorms. Dutch hostel culture leans practical and communal rather than party-hostel chaos, so loud 3am returns from the Poelestraat bar strip will earn you dirty looks, not high-fives. Third, if you end up near the red-light windows on your way back from a night out, the rule is the same as everywhere in this book: no photographs, ever. It breaches someone’s professional space, and you will be confronted.