How to Work in a Hostel
NEW YORK (MainStreet)As someone who writes about both travel and finance, I often find myself thinking about the odd intersection between the two. On the one hand, travel at its best is about throwing off your day to day life and exploring something new. It's about leaving behind the mundane to find the extraordinary, and, let's be honest, what could be more mundane than worrying about the next paycheck?
On the other hand, without that paycheck you're going nowhere in a great big hurry. Food, room, tickets, booze, it all costs money. Without your infrastructure at home, virtually everything you do comes with a price tag, from taking a nap to a simple drink of water. On even the smallest trips, you start bleeding cash the moment you walk out the front door. It may not seem dashing or romantic, but money is the fuel that keeps the travels going. Without good planning, it's all too easy to end up far from home and without enough cash to get back. Trust me, I know.
That's how I ended up working in a hostel.
[Read: Top 10 Travel Sites ]
The Good
For travelers low on cash, or just tight with their budget, working at a hostel can be a great way to save some money while seeing the world. The upshot is obvious: a free place to stay, maybe even with breakfast or a generous bartender if you're lucky. It's a huge money saver since lodging is one of the big three expenses of any trip along with transportation and food. If you can eliminate lodging and cut down on transportation by staying in one place for a while, a tight budget can suddenly get a lot more breathing room.
A hidden benefit is actually getting to settle down somewhere for a while and becoming part of the community--an odd part of the community to be sure, but you're still buying groceries, catching the bus and finding a place to get your daily cup of coffee (if you're into that sort of thing). Instead of building your day around tours, museums and Must See Sights, you go to work, run errands and maybe catch a movie or meet up with friends if there's time.
It's a new sort of normal, learning how daily life works in a city far from home, and I recommend it highly.
As for myself, I worked in Oxford, England for two months in the summer of 2007, after realizing midway through a cross-country backpacking trip that I didn't have enough money to make it to the other side. I'd like to claim credit, or at least some road-weary savvy, for my decision to work at the Oxford Backpackers, but the reality was that it simply fell into my lap. The night after I realized I'd soon run out of cash, the computer system at my hostel crashed, and I managed to negotiate a college career spent fixing PCs into a free place to stay. The fact that it was in Oxford, a city so beautiful it's literally named "The City of Dreaming Spires," was just icing on the cake.
[Read: Top Travel Apps for Summer 2013 ]
The Bad
The drawback, however, is that you have to work in a hostel.
Don't get me wrong, I love backpacker hostels. I'll be the first to recommend them for any age or attitude of traveler. The days of the dumpster diving, bottom of the barrel flophouses are officially over. In their place is a new generation built around the idea of shared experiences rather than saving money every way you can. Instead of four posts and a (ratty) mattress, today's travelers have places like Istanbul's Big Apple and the Nap Park in Bangkok. The industry has grown up.
That said, it's still a hostel, and no matter how nice the furnishings, they still come with 24/7 commotion, constant cleaning and lots and lots of drunken travelers.
For myself that mostly meant playing a constant game of hopscotch with my bed at night. With space at a premium during the summer high season, my place to stay was pretty much "wherever we had space" on any given night. Sometimes that was in the quiet four person dormitory, other times I had to hack it in the noisy 18-bunker. On a few occasions this meant sleeping on the couch out in the hallway, and most likely helping a few alcohol-addled souls find their way to bed.
As the computer guy, I had it easy. Most of the time working at a hostel entails all the standard stuff that comes with a job in the hospitality industry: doing laundry, cleaning up messes, running reception, making beds and hauling people out of them for check-out. It means putting up with customers of every age and temperament, from the fun-loving to the downright rude and being on call at any time of the day or night.
[Read: Your Badonk and Cancer Sticks Will Cost You Under Affordable Care ]
This is the catch, though, with working to travel at all. You get to see incredible places on the cheap, but don't forget you'll be there to work. That free stay in paradise comes with an eight hour shift, sometimes handling some very unpleasant tasks. It can be a wonderful tradeoff, but remember that it is a tradeoff.
I never failed to be surprised by the people who complained about the general "hostel-ness" of their rooms. More than once, we had people come to the front desk because of noisy rooms or because the hostel didn't feel clean enough for their standards, or to express shock that they had to share a bathroom.
For those people, you do the best you can, but at the end of the day, there's not that much to say. Management will try to help, but when you pay $20 to sleep in a dorm room, at a certain point you get what you pay for. When an unnamed couple keeps you up all night for reasons best left to the imagination, that sometimes just comes with the territory of sharing space with seven strangers. Fielding that complaint, unfortunately, comes with the territory of getting your bed for free.
The Useful
For me getting a job was pure coincidence, in fact at the time I didn't even know that it was possible. That doesn't mean it has to be that way for you. Finding work at a hostel is actually a very practical part of any long term plan for travel on a budget, and if you're interested there are a few good ways to start going about it.
First, treat it like any other job search. Figure out what you in particular have to offer. Can you fix things? Have you worked in customer service before? Can you play music or tend bar? A surprising number of skills can come in handy in this industry, and if you put in some creativity, you might realize you have a surprising amount to offer when you reach out to owners.
[Read: Affordable Care Act Rate Shock? ]
Second, do some research on the web. A few sites actually specialize in connecting people with short term jobs in hostels worldwide. Sites like Hosteljobs, Workinhostels and the forum of Hostel Management are great places to start. Focus your search on small, local places. The bigger the hostel, the more likely it is that they'll want to go through a more traditional hiring process and bring someone on long term.
Obviously, the longer you can stay, the easier it'll be to find work, but boutiques are more likely to be O.K. with hiring for three months before letting you go to keep on traveling.
If you're already on the road, start asking around. Word of mouth spreads fast, both within the industry and among fellow backpackers. Don't be afraid to put it out there that you're looking for someplace to hang your hat for a while. You never know. Maybe the place you're staying is a little short handed, or maybe someone's heard of someplace that recently started looking. It certainly can't hurt to ask.
Third, make sure to check your visas. For people on a handshake agreement to do some chores for a place to sleep, this won't really be an issue, but there are two situations where it can be. First, if you go through any formal application process, there's a pretty good bet that they'll ask for a work visa. Second, if they're looking for someone who can stay for a minimum amount of time. Before you make any commitments you can't keep, make sure to check the entry laws. You won't make any friends showing up for a six-month job on a 90-day visa.
Finally, keep an eye out for any red flags. When you head overseas counting on a job from someone you've never met in a place you've never been, things can easily go wrong. For example, I stayed once at a hostel in Malaysia that had up flyers looking for an "Attractive Young Woman Backpacker" to work the front desk. Even as a guy, I felt creeped out. Have a back-up plan in case things go wrong; even if it's just enough money to buy a plane ticket home if things go sideways, you'll be glad for the peace of mind that this isn't a total leap of faith.
[Read: Bitcoin Should Be Treated Like A Commodity, Not A Currency ]
And pro-tip from your travel writing lawyer: never, ever, under any circumstances allow an employer to take your passport away, even if it's just "for safe keeping." If they insist, find a new job.
Good luck out there.
Eric Reed is a freelance journalist who writes frequently on the subjects of career and travel. You can read more of his work at his website www.wanderinglawyer.com.