Our vision is to be the world’s leading social travel platform.
We are on a mission to help travellers find their people and create unforgettable moments together. Connections matter as much as destinations, and we are building a global ecosystem to enable them.
Since the launch of our social network in the hostelling category in 2022, Hostelworld has experienced transformational growth. We have successfully welcomed over 2.6 million social members to our platform, proving the strong demand for connection in travel. This vibrant community is not just booking trips; they are actively engaging, co-creating, and becoming our most powerful brand advocates. The platform is rich with user-generated content, including a rapidly growing volume of customer testimonials and authentic travel stories that provide powerful social proof.
The growth in engagement is remarkable: the number of messages sent between travellers has grown significantly faster than the number of trips booked by social members, demonstrating the deep social utility of our platform. This momentum is reflected in our robust financial health, underscored by a strong balance sheet powered by an asset-light, cash-generative business model.
We are not just another Online Travel Agent (OTA); we have created a new category of travel altogether: Social Travel. Our singular focus on helping travellers find people to hang out with is the foundation of our strategy. It has allowed us to build a powerful and defensible market position, which attracts highly valuable customers and shifts more of our business onto our mobile-native apps.
While our app and social features create a sticky user experience, our true competitive moat stems from the incredibly rich, proprietary data set generated by our social network. As our community grows, so does the value of this data, creating a compounding network effect that is nearly impossible to replicate. This "social flywheel" allows us to understand traveller behaviour, predict needs, and personalise experiences in ways that generalist OTAs cannot match. It is the engine that will power our long-term, differentiated growth and solidify our position as the sole player in the Social Travel category we created.
At our Capital Markets Day in April 2025, we unveiled our ambitious strategy to build on our success and realise our vision over the next three years. This strategy is organised around five key themes:
Strengthening the Core OTA Platform: We will continue to enhance our core booking engine, ensuring a seamless and efficient experience for our customers and hostel partners, further solidifying our position as the leading platform for hostel discovery and booking.
Building 'Pre-Booking' Social Features: We are developing innovative features like 'Travel Plans', designed to engage users much earlier in their travel journey. These features will accelerate the creation of social profiles and drive app downloads, fuelling our social flywheel before a single bed is booked.
Leveraging AI for an Enhanced Social Experience: We will embed AI into our pre- and post-booking features to deliver unparalleled personalisation and value. This includes AI-powered recommendations for people to meet, places to go, and things to do, making our social network an indispensable travel companion.
Expanding our Addressable Market: We will expand our reach and product portfolio through targeted partnerships and M&A. This will allow us to cater to a broader segment of the youth travel market and integrate new, complementary services into our social travel ecosystem.
Building New Revenue Streams: Our social network is more than an engagement tool; it is a new platform for monetisation. We will develop new revenue streams directly from our social features, creating value for our users and our business in ways that traditional OTAs cannot.
Our Culture
At Hostelworld, our culture is a direct reflection of our customers: adventurous, curious, and social. We have a shared love of travel that fuels our work and connects us on a deeper level. It’s a fast-paced environment that blends the agility and "scrappy" resourcefulness of a start-up with the experience and ambition of a global, publicly listed company.
We are a team of pragmatic optimists who are data-obsessed and results-driven. We value a ‘test and learn’ mindset, encouraging experimentation and empowering our teams to take calculated risks. We believe in doing the right thing—for our customers, our partners, and each other. We foster a supportive and collaborative atmosphere where diverse perspectives are celebrated, and where every team member has the opportunity to make a significant impact on our journey. We embrace the journey, not just the destination, and we seek leaders who will thrive in a dynamic environment and inspire their teams to do the same.
This role is based in Portugal. We have an office hub in 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 a senior level. The Head of Social Media & Influencers will lead and develop a team of direct reports across social, content, and creator disciplines, alongside managing agency and freelance partners.
This role establishes social as a core growth engine for Hostelworld — moving away from fragmented, platform-level execution to a fully integrated, strategic approach across content, creators, and community.
- Drives integrated social strategy: Moves from siloed platform activity to a cohesive, end-to-end social approach aligned to brand and demand generation
- Builds scalable capability: Develops a structured creator, community and content ecosystem that can scale reach, engagement and impact globally
- Closes a critical capability gap: Addresses the current lack of senior social and creator expertise, ensuring stronger strategic direction, consistency and performance across channels
Overall, this role enables social to play a more meaningful role in driving brand relevance, customer engagement and growth — rather than operating as a set of disconnected activities.
WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS
Hostelworld is the world's #1 hostel booking platform — and social media is not a support channel for this brand. It is the growth engine. We exist at the intersection of travel, youth culture, and human connection, and our audience is as social-native as any consumer brand in the world.
We’re hiring a Head of Social Media to turn social into a true growth engine for Hostelworld — leading strategy, execution, and commercial outcomes across organic, creator, and community. This is a senior leadership role with end-to-end ownership of our social and creator ecosystem, responsible for turning cultural relevance into real demand.
This is not a role for someone managing content calendars and reporting on impressions. It’s for someone who understands how attention turns into action — who thinks in ecosystems, not channels, and can connect a TikTok trend to an app download, a Social Pass, and ultimately a booking.
Social is the primary battleground for the next generation of travellers. Hostelworld's audience — 18–35, solo travellers, culturally curious — discovers, trusts, and books through social channels more than any other medium. The opportunity: position Hostelworld not as a brand in the feed, but as the platform that backpacker culture orbits around.
We have strong foundations. We have proven creator relationships. We have a product differentiator — the Social Pass — that is genuinely social-native. What we need now is the strategic leadership to connect all of it into a demand generation machine: Content Community Awareness App Download Booking.
This hire will define how Hostelworld competes for the next five years.
In the first 12 months, we expect the Head of Social to:
- Define and implement a social measurement framework — connecting platform metrics to app downloads, Social Pass conversion, and booking influence
- Deliver a step-change in content quality and cultural relevance — measurable through engagement rate, share rate, and earned media value
- Build or significantly evolve the creator programme — with documented attribution from creator activity to commercial outcomes
- Grow the Hostelworld social audience with intent — reaching 18–35 solo travellers at the top of their booking consideration journey
- Establish social as a primary driver of app download growth
- Build a high-performing team — clear roles, strong capability development, low attrition
- Produce board-ready social investment cases — that secure further resource allocation based on proven returns
1. Social Media Strategy & Platform Ownership
- 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
- Own Hostelworld's social brand voice — distinctive, consistent, and culturally credible across markets
- Stay ahead of platform algorithm shifts and format innovations — translating them into strategic advantage before competitors do
2. Content Strategy & Social Content
- This role owns social content strategy and is the primary driver of what gets made, why, and for whom. Creative production sits with the Head of Brand, and this role works in close partnership with that team — providing social-specific briefs, platform context, and performance feedback. Direct content ownership covers UGC, community-generated content, and creator output. The measure of success is not creative quality in isolation, but content that moves people through the funnel.
- Own the social content strategy — content pillars, formats, cadence, and publishing standards across all platforms, tied to the commercial funnel
- Brief and partner with the brand creative team — providing platform-specific briefs, audience insight, and format guidance to shape social-first creative; feeding performance data back to improve output
- Directly 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
- Translate campaign briefs into social content plans — working with the brand team to ensure campaign creative lands on social with platform-native execution, not just resized assets
- Set and maintain social content quality standards — owning the editorial bar for everything published across Hostelworld’s social channels, with consistency across global markets
3. Creator & Influencer Strategy
- Move Hostelworld from transactional creator partnerships to a structural creator community — where creators live inside the Hostelworld ecosystem, build audiences through it, and drive followers to book through it.
- 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
- Design creator partnerships with genuine commercial architecture — not just media buys — integrating creators into product features, community experiences, and booking journeys
- Develop always-on creator relationships — not campaign-by-campaign transactions
- 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
- Stay current on creator economy shifts — platform monetisation changes, talent market dynamics, and emerging creator categories
- Negotiate and manage creator commercial agreements — including fee benchmarking and ROI modelling
4. Community Strategy & Social Engagement
- Hostelworld's brand is built on human connection. The community strategy must make that real — not just as a marketing posture, but as a genuine product and social experience that drives retention, loyalty, and word-of-mouth demand generation.
- Define Hostelworld's community strategy across social platforms — with clear objectives for community size, engagement depth, and commercial contribution
- Build community management as a strategic capability — proactive, culturally-led, and brand-building — not a reactive comment-moderating function
- Design and activate community programmes that reinforce the Social Pass value proposition
- Own and evolve the Hostelworld social tone of voice — ensuring community interactions feel human and credible across all markets
- Develop community-led content initiatives — challenges, campaigns, and formats that turn passive followers into active participants
- Build social listening and intelligence capability — using community signals to inform product, content, and commercial decisions
5. Performance, Analytics & Commercial Accountability
- This role is accountable to commercial outcomes, not social vanity metrics. The Head of Social must be 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
- Develop attribution approaches for creator and organic social
- Own social budget management — investment allocation, pacing, and efficiency across creator fees, content production, and tool costs
6. Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Lead, develop, and inspire the social and content team — setting clear direction, building capability, and driving a high-performance culture
- Manage agency and freelance partners — treating them as an extension of the in-house team
- 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
Experience & Qualifications:
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
Highly Advantageous
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
Knowledge & Skills:
Beyond the experience, we are looking for a specific type of leader. Someone who is commercially sharp but culturally fluent. Someone who can sit with the CMO and build the board case and then go back and brief the creator partner on the same afternoon.
You are obsessed with what's working and impatient with what isn't. You have strong opinions about platforms and formats, and you hold them until the data tells you to change them. You believe social media is not a cost centre — it is a growth lever. And you have the results to prove it.
Competitive salary & benefits
Enhanced annual leave plus 3 Wellbeing Days per year
Paid family leave (maternity, paternity, surrogacy & adoption)
Agile working (plus a Working from Abroad Policy!)
Support for your ongoing growth & development
Inclusive people policies (sickness, menopause, compassionate and fertility leave)
A chance to give back to your local community with 5 paid volunteering days
Grow others - We fundamentally believe that investing in growing others benefits everyone, whether it's helping them develop hard or soft skills. We want learning and growing to be part of our DNA to help makes us a better team, together.
Master it - We are obsessed with our area of expertise and enjoy developing our skills. We rarely take things at face value; we investigate, interrogate, and always look for ‘the why,’ and wherever possible, we use data to find the best solution.
Collaborate - We are in it together, for the tough stuff and the celebrations too. To achieve the best results, we need expertise from all areas of the organisation, and we wholeheartedly welcome diverse thinking.
Adapt - We work fluidly, adapting to new information and the evolving environment while staying committed to our goals. Innovation and experimentation fuel our projects and we’re never afraid to pivot.
Deliver - Our focus is always on the end result; we value outcomes over activity. We collaborate to deliver work at speed without dropping any of our other behaviours.
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.
