Hostelworld is the world's leading Social Travel platform - a social network-powered OTA on a mission to help travellers find their people and create unforgettable moments together. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Ireland, we're a team of around 270 people serving hostel partners across more than 180 countries.
Since launching our social network in 2022, we've welcomed over 3.4 million social members who aren't just booking trips, they're messaging, finding events, meeting up and becoming powerful brand advocates. This community generates a rich proprietary dataset of 16 million+ chat messages and 17 million bookings, powering AI-driven personalisation and network effects that no generalist OTA can replicate.
We are not just another OTA - we created an entirely new category – Social Travel. If you want to shape the future of travel by putting people and shared experiences at the heart of it, you'll fit right in here - Learn more about our Team!
This role can be based Ireland, Portugal or the UK. We have an office hubs in Dublin and Porto available for those who prefer a hybrid model where you can spend time with colleagues in-person. You will need to be able to commute to our office hub as required from time to time.
This role sits as a key member of the Marketing Leadership Team, contributing to overall marketing strategy and representing social, creator, and community at senior level. The Head of Social Media & Influencers will lead direct reports across social, content, and creator disciplines, while managing agency and freelance partners.
This role establishes social as a core growth engine for Hostelworld, moving from fragmented platform-level activity to an integrated strategy across content, creators, and community.
- Own the global social media strategy across all platforms — with full accountability for connecting social activity to commercial outcomes (app downloads, Social Pass acquisition, bookings).
- Define the platform architecture — where Hostelworld plays, how it shows up, and what winning looks like on each
TikTok: Cultural velocity, creator amplification, trend-led and brand-led content
Instagram (Reels, Stories, Feed): Community nurturing, conversion, UGC integration
YouTube & Shorts: Long-form travel storytelling, destination content, creator series
Emerging platforms: Evaluate and place strategic bets on BeReal, Lemon8, and what comes next
- Set channel-level KPIs that ladder to commercial metrics — not just reach and engagement
- Build and govern the editorial and content calendar — balancing brand, product, campaign, and cultural moments
- Stay ahead of platform algorithm shifts and format innovations — translating them into strategic advantage before competitors do
- Own the social content strategy — defining what gets made, why and for whom. Creative production sits with the Head of Brand, with this role providing social-specific briefs, platform context and performance feedback. Own UGC, community-generated content and creator output, with success measured by movement through the funnel, not creative quality in isolation.
- Brief and partner with the brand creative team — providing platform-specific briefs, audience insight, format guidance and performance data to improve output
- Own and build the UGC programme — activating the Hostelworld traveller community to generate authentic content at scale, turning guests into a distributed content engine
- Directly own community content — community challenges, participatory formats, and social-native activations that build belonging and drive sharing behaviour
- Lead content experimentation — structured test-and-learn cycles on formats, hooks, CTAs, and platform-native features, with findings fed back into the briefing process
- Own the end-to-end creator strategy — from identification and tiering through to partnership design, commercial terms, and performance evaluation
- Build and manage a tiered creator programme
Mega/Macro: Strategic brand positioning, cultural reach, tentpole campaign amplification
Mid-tier: Conversion efficiency, niche travel community authority, sustained partnership value
Micro/Nano: Authenticity, peer-to-peer trust, UGC at scale — the backbone of the community flywheel
- Lead a Creator Ambassador Programme — selecting, developing, and retaining creators who become the face of Hostelworld to their communities
- Build creator attribution and measurement infrastructure — connecting creator activity to app downloads, Social Pass uptake, and booking conversion
- Negotiate and manage creator commercial agreements — including fee benchmarking and ROI modelling
- Make Hostelworld’s brand promise of human connection real through community strategy that drives retention, loyalty and word-of-mouth demand generation.
- Define and activate Hostelworld's community strategy across social platforms driving engagement, loyalty, advocacy and Social Pass adoption.
- Build community management as a strategic capability — proactive, culturally-led, and brand-building.
- Build social listening and intelligence capability — using community signals to inform product, content, and commercial decisions
- Be accountable for commercial outcomes, not vanity metrics — as comfortable in a data review as in a creative briefing.
- Define and own the social measurement framework — connecting platform metrics to commercial signals: app downloads, Social Pass conversion, booking intent, revenue influence
- Build and present regular performance reporting — to CMO and senior leadership — clear, commercial, and decision-enabling
- Lead investment cases for social and creator spend — with ROI modelling, scenario planning, and benchmark comparisons
- Own social budget management — investment allocation, pacing, and efficiency across creator fees, content production, and tool costs
- Lead, develop, and inspire the social and content team — setting clear direction, building capability, and driving a high-performance culture
- Work closely with the performance marketing team — ensuring organic social and paid social amplification strategies are coherent and mutually reinforcing
- Partner with brand and campaign teams — translating brand strategy into social-first creative frameworks
- Collaborate with product on social-native features — particularly Social Pass development, in-app community experiences, and creator tools
- Represent social at senior leadership level — contributing to CMO planning, board presentations, and cross-functional strategic decisions
8+ years in social media, with at least 3 in a senior or leadership role
Demonstrable experience building social as a demand generation channel — show us the commercial results, not just the content
Deep, current platform expertise across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube — algorithms, formats, culture, and commercial mechanics
Proven creator strategy track record — from identifying talent to designing partnerships that drive commercial outcomes
Experience building and managing community programmes at meaningful scale
Commercial fluency — you can build a business case, model a creator ROI, and present to a CFO
Team leadership experience — you have managed social or content teams and built high-performance creative cultures
Strong creative instinct — you know what makes content stop the scroll, and you can brief teams to execute it consistently
Experience in travel, OTA, hospitality, or a consumer brand with a social-native audience
Experience launching or scaling a creator ambassador programme from the ground up
Familiarity with app-first businesses and social-to-app-download funnel mechanics
Experience in global or multi-market social roles
Working knowledge of creator economy platforms — Grin, Aspire, Modash, Social Blade, or equivalent
Beyond the experience, we are looking for a leader who is commercially sharp and culturally fluent — able to build the board case with the CMO and brief a creator partner on the same afternoon.
You are obsessed with what works and impatient with what does not. You hold strong views on platforms and formats but let the data change your mind. You believe social is not a cost centre — it is a growth lever — and you have the results to prove it.
We believe in talented and diverse teams that reflect the diversity of our customers and the communities in which we operate. Everyone brings different perspectives and experiences. We lay out the above requirements to guide applicants to the experiences that we believe will allow you to be successful in the role. If you don’t meet them all, please consider applying if you think you can still perform the role as described.
