Hostel festivities – preparing your hostel for the New Year’s Eve

It’s that time of the year again – the New Year’s Eve! It’s becoming more and more popular with travelers to go on a trip for this night. As a hostel owner, you should try and make sure you make the most of the New Year. Travelers who go away from home want to experience the culture and social life of the locals while everybody is cheerful and in a partying mood, and you, as always, should give your guests what they want.

“Many travelers already have something in mind when they arrive and probably have already planned out how they want to spend their night, but a New Year’s Eve party in a hostel is growing in popularity and each year, more and more hostel guests stay in. You should devote yourself to organizing this special day.”

First of all, what you should do is promote the event you are organizing in advance. Travelers have to know that they can expect something special in your hostel in order for them to turn up. Use your social media profiles and pages to intensively talk about the party you are going to throw. Also, add this information on your online channels of distribution and make sure they have all the right information they need when they start searching for a place they will spend their New Year’s Eve at. Furthermore, you should also advertize it in your town with a view to getting some locals in who would like to socialize with the travelers and bring them closer to the local way of celebrations.

Secondly, you should consider what to do with the decorations. Your guests have picked your city for a reason – they want to experience what it’s like for the New Year’s Eve in that certain part of the world. Try to be authentic – if you own a hostel in Greece, try to make it as Greek as possible. But, don’t overdo it, if you Greek it up too much it can become tiresome to someone who is not accustomed to your ways of doing it – find a balance between a traditional and modern way of celebrating that is appealing to everyone.

You should make sure your hostel is decorated accordingly. Have a big enough Christmas tree in the common area and encourage the guests to take part in decorating it. Leave some inexpensive gifts (for example, sweets and candies wrapped in a paper with a quote regarding the New Year) for your guests, as this will aid you in creating a festive atmosphere. Additionally, add some Christmas lights and other Christmas decorations throughout your hostel, especially if there is something authentic regarding the customs of your town/country. You should also do a research of all major and interesting events for the day and put the information about them up in the common area.

When it comes to the New Year’s Eve itself, you should define what kind of party you want to organize (how loud you want it to be). If you want to throw a party, make sure you get the permission for it, as it would be extremely annoying were the party to be stopped because of neighbors’ complaints. Besides that, you should also consider what music will be playing and the beverages you will be serving. You should mix up some traditional folk music with international hits so that they have an insight into the local way of celebrations, but also that they don’t get bored after a while. As everybody is in a celebratory mood that night, you should offer spirits and put an emphasis on a national drink (for example, if you are from Glasgow, make whisky be the main thing on your menu). What’s more, you should lower your prices for the night – you will earn more than enough that night and everybody will be encouraged by the discount to continue feasting.

You should also serve something to eat, try putting up a barbecue and give food to your guests for an affordable fee (again, if there is a traditional dish, make it).

There is also a list of things you should avoid. For example, some of your guests won’t be in the mood to celebrate until the morning – make sure they can comfortably sleep in their rooms and not get kept awake by the racket and the music. Furthermore, if there are some locals attending, restrict them to the common area and don’t allow them to go to bedrooms. Lastly, your staff should be the ones who are going to create a celebratory atmosphere, so don’t make them do this unwillingly and reward them financially for working on the NYE, as their mood will be reflected on your guests.