Do you want to gain experience in many fields, including how to run a hostel, organize events, and lead people and yet get many useful and memorable connections from all around the world while being able to party every day and night?
You could and you will become part of our family of international backpacking brothers and sisters. It is a good opportunity to learn about Slovak traditions and history if you’re interested and practice the language (like ordering beer and Borovička ;)). We will show you the city, the best places to get a beer, to relax, to visit and see, and, of course, to party.
We are two very social hostels in the city center of Bratislava, one is the Wild Elephants Hostel, and the other one is the Urban Elephants Hostel. It doesn’t matter which one you are needed in the most, the main difference is where you sleep, eat and work, since we party, do activities and hang out together.
While working here you will need to welcome and socialize with our guests, share your thoughts and experiences, bring in your creativity and talents, and organize events, parties, trips, dinners, etc. You will be required to do many different tasks, such as reception work (check-in and check-out of guests, handling bookings) and housekeeping (changing beds, doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, rooms, common areas, and bathrooms).
The Volunteers are accommodated in one of our mixed dormitory rooms exclusively with other members of the staff. We provide all your food in exchange for your help in the hostel. In the evenings there are vegan dinners where everyone is coming together and talking about the experiences of the day.
For the free accommodation and free food, a volunteer has to help us out for 25 hours a week. We prefer staff to stay for at least a month as reception training itself takes a week, a month and a half is ideal. Sometimes we can discuss a shorter stay if you are okay with cleaning only or if have any special talent to bring in, but the minimum stay in general is 2 weeks. Your level of English should be conversational. If you smoke that is no problem for us. We do accept couples of *friends*, but we do NOT accept couples.
We offer our Volunteers different ways to earn some pocket money on the side. This includes cooking vegan dinners for the staff and our guests and running our famous Drunken Heroes Pub-Crawls through the nightlife of Bratislava.
By really caring about the hostel and doing some extra work, we are not blind (always checking on the staff) and if the motivation is persistent and last for more than a few weeks we always offer reception-only work that is paid and you will be responsible to check on the cleanliness and on volunteers work that has to be done instead of doing it only by yourself (just giving a shit in general), but most importantly to make sure the volunteers pay very close attention to our guests (and by that, we do not mean only those they are interested in).
Despite the fact that the work has to be done properly, you will have a great time here and meet a bunch of cool people during your stay, learn new skills, and experience yet inexperienced situations.
First please tell us about yourself and about your motivation to volunteer for us because we have many applicants so please make it short and right on the point, long essays are not accepted and won’t be read. Also, make sure to add the 🐘 in your message to make sure you read everything in order to avoid useless questions and waste of time 🙂
We have a team of about 40 volunteers from all over the world and 2-3 paid “volunteers”(each hostel) at a time which is constantly changing so feel free to contact us any time. If we are in need of someone at the moment we will get back to you as soon as possible.