A little bit of history (II)

After the official opening there were still many thing to do. And was only after summer when we finished almost everything. We were new in this job, so sometimes there was a bit of confusion. Something were forgotten, some we didn't know, others difficult, but all the problems became nothing with the feeling of seeing the people in the hostel having a good time.

The first month finished good, we had a 70% of beds sold and people was writing good comments about the hostel. Of course, there was also some who didn't like, but that is normal.
This month we had also many work. We were working 24/7 4 persons and one cleaning woman. With shifts of 12 hours during 7 days and one month we were really stressed and tired.
With this situation and after the first month we decided to find one more person to help us in the hostel. First we took one young girl, who was giving flyers for the hostel, to help us in the evenings, but this result to be not the right decision. She was good, but too young and we couldn't trust her. Then, after some interviews, we found Edite, an energetic latvian girl with a lot of enthusiasm for this work. She really did a good job here but she could work only one month.

The summer was going good, the hostel was full and we liked the job. We meet many new people and made a lot of new friends.
For mid august, we finished our last room. It's in the top floor and when we rented the place was completely empty. The work here was difficult, there was some technic hard work to do and in this country is not easy to find good people for this kind of work.

Finally, the summer was 2 months long, July and August. On September, the people dicressed a lot and we were only in a half percent of beds sold. Anyway this is enough, but this was the begining of the scary winter that we were expecting since the beginning of the summer.
With the end of the summer, we also observed a change in the kind of visitors. The usual summer tourist, was changed by a weekender with more interest in have fun that in visiting new places. We also had the great surprise of the Erasmus students. From all the countries and from all nationalities, we were welcoming gusts during all winter. Groups of students, usually more than 5, who came for the weekend to enjoy Riga, Tallin and Vilnius.

The winter was long, 5 months and very quiet, but we survived, and anyway the ambient in the hostel is better with less people, you can offer more personal care and people fels more like visiting a home. Also we were living there, which give you more time to enjoy.

And this is the end of our history, the present, which will became history, you will can read it here.

Riga Hostel