15 years
The word uniforms is so unhostel...but that said I hope to be getting T-shirts for my staff soon, and a t-shirt would be the most I would expect to see as a uniform in hostel staff.
If I see a tie in a hostel I am immediately put off it.
Hostel Uniforms
General Hostel Operations
Does your hostel staff wear uniforms?
Do you think hostel staff should wear uniforms?
If yes, what kind of uniforms should they wear?
- Comments
15 years
If I see a tie in a hostel I am immediately put off it.
LOL, agreed.
I wouldn´t even expect them to wear a t-shirt. Hand out those t-shirts, but leave it up to them if they want to wear it.
Our cleaners wear them totally voluntarily, because they don´t want to make their own clothes dirty and when they enter a room with people in it it´s immediately clear who they are.
If someone is behind the bar or reception, it´s obvious anyway.
15 years
it is something that we are discussing in our hostels at the moment....
On one side, i believe hostels with uniforms are tend to be looked as more professional or well organized. Also, if you have 200 beds or more, you need to identify your staff from regular passengers ....BUT, uniforms also contribute to a more demanding clientele. Things that passenger would let go in a small hostel, wouldn't be let go in a place with uniforms and this sort of details....(this not meaning that no using uniforms gives you the option of providing a bad service)....
We have smalls hostels and big hostels...We are at the moment discussing this issue and I reckon we will go with name tags in the small ones and uniforms in the 200+ beds hostels.....
15 years
We have four hostels with 200+ beds and nobody ever said we need uniforms, be it to identify ourselves or look professional.
You´ll just waste money.
I had to wear a t-shirt at another hostel 15 years ago. I hated it. To make matters worse, our smelly boss gave us two t-shirts each. I don´t wear one t-shirt longer than one day and don´t want to do laundry every other day.
15 years
Probably it is personal experiences....I've been to big big hostels and i hate when i can't find staff members and iam in room 234234 on the top floor...
And when i mean uniforms, we talk about t-shirts, nothing else....I know hostels where they provide shoes and trousers and that looks creepy already....
name tags,, by personal experience too, were always a great great help.....It makes such a difference for passengers to call you by name than "that guy in the morning that i don't know his name"....
15 years
Well, maybe it´s really personal. I´m German and we´re a bit allergic to uniforms... of ANY sort.
Hint: guys often prefer to wear a cap with the hostel logo on it. Additional advantage: you don´t need heaps of them because you don´t have to wash it every day.
Hint 2: let your staff design the things.
15 years
I liked hint 2 ;)
We have e designer for all this....but instead of me judging if they are appropiate or not...it will be all left to staff....
We did it for the last world cup making shirts from the hostel according to the nationality of each one of the staff members and it was great...We had aussies, paraguayans chileneans, argentine, english....
great idea that came from staff....
15 years
Must admit I'm personally against uniforms - if you're behind reception they know who you are hopefully. They to me just give off the wrong feel for what I think a hostel should be - i.e. homely and welcoming - not institutional. Certainly I doubt you'd get better staff ratings on reviews if you have uniforms, probably the reverse. There can be a tendency for some staff to "hide behind" their uniform rather then get involved with the customers. As far as cleaning/ food preparation staff goes, this may be a different story, perhaps the hostel has a duty to supply uniforms to protect the staff's clothes. Not really a problem I have here.
The picture below typifies everything wrong with uniforms to me - institutional, cold, impersonal and trying to look like a 5 star hotel when you're in fact a hostel.
15 years
Hahaha, cheers for the picture.
We could fill pages with arguments, but the picture makes the point perfectly.
Pathetic! :D
15 years
ROFL thanks for that pic - perfect!!
I like the idea of a hostel t-shirt from a marketing/branding perspective.
I bought a sweater by a local designer on Skye that had a celtic 'eilean a' cheo' and outline of the island on it. When we started managing a hostel on Skye we went back and bought a couple more of the same in a t-shirt and wore them in the hostel.
Once we started getting other staff through they all wanted the same shirt (even the German girls!) - mostly as a reminder/token of their time in the hostel, and on Skye. If you also sell the shirts to guests (as Macbackpackers do in Scotland) they can work as PR for your hostel.
That pic has reminded me that when I worked for SYHA (in various hostels) I used to 'collect' different coloured shirts in each hostel. Lord knows why because they were hideously oversized and had numerous previous owners...
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