Hi there fella!
Here are some basic rules how to become a likeable guest in a hostel. After reading the instructions you should practise and live these rules at home first. Ask your sister or friends to help you, let them play a person, which stays normally in hostel, like other travellers, cleaning staff or receptionists. After some weeks you will be more adorable, cooperative and open minded. This will even have influence to the rest of your life. Maybe somebody is already waiting for your new and sexy personality, who knows??! But first to work!
1. We all like to be admired or beloved . Not so the receptionist. The receptionist is no normal person. He is an outsider. Funnily enough he doesn’t like to flirt with the 20th drunken guest, who comes through the door, he doesn’t want to have a free beer or Schnaps (the boss could be always around) and he also doesn’t want to bring you to the airport in person when you leave the day after. Even though he likes to chat, he is probably already appointed to his afterwork beer waiting in his fridge. Sorry but after so much partying you cannot compete against the afterwork beer.
2. The receptionist wants to get to know other people. Yeah, but only cool people, who you can make friends with. If you think you are cool enough, you can give it a try. Small talking over hours and hours is a no go! It doesn’t get better the more you try, means it is not a matter of time. The receptionist is already small talking the whole day long. Remember, you have a connection to the person or you don’t! If you think you don’t have any similarities leave it with the small talk; the receptionist understands.
3. You always wanted to try to sleep in a hostel. Yeah, that is very cool,… at first sight. But not anymore if you ask for special waking up service while staying in a dormitory room. Also questions like: „Do you have any knive in the self cooking kitchen?“, “ the guy in my room is snoring, I cannot sleep!“ or asking for private bathrooms in the dorm, will let you look like a typical hotel deluxe person and will be detected very quickly by the real hostel people. If you’re a real traveller, you know how to survive!
4. Nobody is more hated by the hostel staff than former guests, who didn’t speak with anybody. That would be ok, if this guest wouldn’t speak after his stay in the hostel also. The receptionist will read your reviews you posted on Hostelworld or Hostelbookers or whatever. If you can tell strangers that you didn’t get a towel, or that you hated the stairs up to your room or that your locker didn’t work, why not telling the person you know most in a foreign city, your receptionist?? He will be delighted to change your situation as long as you do not act like point 3.
5. Hey, it is always very annoying to wash the dishes, we know. But you are an adult now, and the time has come to do that by yourself. Your mom is not travelling with you, and if you think the receptionist could be your new mom now, your wrong. A self cooking kitchen is a self cooking kitchen.
6. Other countries, other conventions. The real traveller is going into the life of the natives, he is reading a little bit in guide books or the internet not only to understand, but also not to ambarrass himself. In Germany for example you can flush the toilet paper into the toilet, there is no need to put it in the trash…since it is very common to seperate the trash in Europe by now, plastic to plastic, paper to paper, glass to glass and so on, it will be a very strange situation if the receptionist or other european travellers will find some strange looking paper in the garbage shortly after you left the toilet. Remember that the receptionist has to seperate what you throw away.
7. You think you are a modern traveller? Does that mean for you to be available for everybody anytime by phone or the internet?? You do not only have a mobile, but also a second one and a labtop? Do you spend most of the time surfing in the internet while staying in a hostel and you think having only one computer access in a hostel is not enough?? ….You suck! You should just stay at home.
8. Last but not least, if you think the hostel was fun and safe, the rooms were clean as same as the bathrooms and the staff was more than helpful and nice to you and there was nothing you could complain about, why don’t you give the hostel a 100 % rating over booking websites? We as receptionists just don’t understand a 95 % rating after we really worked our ass off. But please, keep in mind point 3 and 4 while you rate.
So, now you are prepared and after you opened your eyes for the world of the hostelworkers, pack your stuff together and explore the world! Everybody will love you now, especially all of us ! ;-)
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