Too many volunteers?
If you run a hostel with 37 beds and you accept 9 volunteers at once, would it help your business or hurt it?
Salem Orion was recently asking himself if he should accept all of the volunteers who applied for his position in June.
I messed up a little and thought we still had volunteering availability for June. 4 or 5 people still think there is a position available. I haven't told any of them that they have that position or thats its saved for them so I'm okay there.
But I'm considering adding them to the 5 staff we already have and having them do stuff we only do sometimes, like cook family meals every night, daily social media posting, CPR classes, walking tours, event planner and bar & club hopping tour guide.
All great things I like doing with the hostel but I've got worries.
Will I regret not having the extra beds available for paying guest?
Will they try just as much as when I have 3 cleaners and 1 handyman or will I find it hard to get them to care as much since there are so many?
I've never had 10 ish volunteers in my small (37 bed) hostel.
Also do you have any suggestions for other things extra volunteers can do?
Whats your thoughts?
Thanks
Here were some of the suggestions from the community:
From Lia Muscogiuri:
I think that 10 people are too much and when they are too much they usually do too less.
Better having few people but with some precise skills you really need.
Like one for cooking, one for marketing and socials... and as their sheets are around 4-5 hours per day, when the job in which they’re skilled it’s done, they can help you with normal things as pub crawl and so on, that everybody can do.
In opposite way, you’ll have too many people and not enough things they can do
From Dragan Gazdic:
Headache. 3 and more u will get party all day
From Adam Burke:
Forecast your occupancy based on previous years. Calculate what the opportunity cost of having a volunteer in a bed that would ordinarily be paid for is. If their job is to sell more beds by improving the hostel you need to make sure you have enough capacity. If you still want/need them - it would be likely cheaper to rent an apartment in town for them instead of giving 27% of your total occupancy to volunteers.
From Lior Slepkov:
People will always fill in the time they have no matter the resources. What I mean by that is that unless you create clear defined responsibilities and tasks for the new things you want to implement and stay on top of them, they will do with 10 what they did before with 5.
Also careful that if you add more value to your hostel with added activities. people will start to mention this in their reviews and you will create an expectation that will then not be met for future guests once you stop these bonus activities.
From David Uribe Gosselin:
If you over-booked volunteers, just try to do the same as a 'normal' overbooking: try finding them Hostels that are looking. Idk if you guys have one yet, but in our regional Whatsapp people are always announcing and requesting volunteers.
What would you recommend?
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