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do you hire extra staff to socialize with guests?

General Hostel Operations

zomac started this discussion 10 years 11 months ago

We only have two roles in the hostel: receptionists and cleaners. And I'm thinking if a kind of activities coordinator is needed.

Our receptionists are mainly responsible for daily check-in/out, answering questions on phone, social networks and on the site. It relies a lot on me to bring people up together because my receptionists are busy like hell!

At the beginning I interacted with most guests, was able to call everyone by their names, and if they feel alone I'd put them together and play some games. This model doesn't work in long run. I feel totally exhausted with it. And I really need someone to organize activities and interact with other guests.

The questions: Is it common for a hostel to hire someone to do this job? Or would they just ask some volunteers to do it? How would the hostel evaluate the performance of these position?

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Rucksack Brian

10 years

Doing all the socializing yourself can be very rewarding if you like it, but it’s exhausting for sure. It’s pretty common for hostels to hire activity coordinators these days. Frequently they get volunteers or hire backpackers for it because the job responsibilities come naturally to them.

You could evaluate their performance based on:

Ratings and customer feedback (especially if they are mentioned by name)
The number, frequency, or consistency of activities/events they organize
The number of people who participate in each event (taking into account the number of guests in house)

Encourage them to take pictures and document all events. It’s good for social media marketing, and it helps them to recreate the activity at a later time. It also helps you to see what they’re doing when you’re not involved.

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Worker Bee

10 years

Well she is a very important member of our team but she is not on our payroll.
I let my guests know when they book that I have a very friendly retired sled dog living here.
The majority of our fall, winter and spring guests come up here for dog sledding in the Canadian North so being able to take one for a walk is a great way to socialize. Whitehorse is referred to as the Wilderness City so guests often feel much safer having a dog with them when the hike the trails around town. :love:

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rjd1983

9 years

I worked at one hostel, where the cleaner was also the "events' co-ordinator". Wasn't a very good co-ordinator, all he was really interested in was the free drink voucher.

But a lot of bars that cater for backpackers will give these co-ordinators and/or hostel staff free drink vouchers, to encourage them to bring their hostel mates. If the bars in your area offer something similar, it's definitely worth having an events' co-ordinator, and tell them that's the perk of the job (vouchers), but they have to do more than just take them to bars...

I also have a friend who runs a pubcrawl back in London, and what he used to do was give these cards out to hostel staff, and the staff would write their name on the cards and give them to guests, and my friend would pay them a commission, and the guests would get about £2 off the pubcrawl. Everyone is a winner! You would be surprised by how creative staff would be in giving out the cards. It created friendly competition as well.

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