Hotel and restaurant management student started a new Pop Up hostel

Our hostel crew with Namibian exchange students

The final exam of our third year was to carry out a project in Dream Hostel. Five students, who chose the hotel themed project, managed Dream Hostel for two weeks together with its own staff. Basically we took care of all the operations including the reception, housekeeping, customer service and event organizing. We named the hostel Pop Up Hostel, since it only operates for a short while just like Pop Up restaurants. It is a hostel inside of another hostel. The purpose of this project was to use all the things we’ve learned in practice. Ville Virkki, the owner of Dream Hostel, was glad to give us the opportunity to test our skills in a real work environment and see how a hostel is run.

Board games and popcorn in great company!

Evening events were mainly aimed at hostel guests but also exchange students who were at Tampere. We had three events per week. At game nights we played board games and had something tasty to eat, like pancakes or popcorn. The aim of game nights was to attract outside visitors to hostel and give everyone the chance to get to know new people.   

  

During Finnish food cooking night participants had the chance to make and taste some Finnish specialties. For example Karelian pastries with egg butter, blood sausage and cinnamon rolls were on the menu. We thought the evening was successful, and we got lots of thanks and positive feedback from participants. 

In events we also provided the opportunity to explore Tampere centrum by foot, and pub crawl took its participants to see city’s nightlife. We visited pubs such as Ohranjyvä, Café Europa and Bar K. Our project’s last night was spent at the hostel with playing a quiz and eating tasty goodies. 

Karelian pastries and legendary Tapola blood sausage in Finnish food cooking night

                          

Two Namibian exchange student girls had a great possibility to get to know Finnish working methods and develop their Finnish language skills. Dream Hostel staff was very helpful and we were given quite a free rein all around. We didn’t get as many guests to attend the evening events as we would have liked, but we were happy with the guests that we got. The main thing was that everyone had fun. Few free local papers (Tamperelainen and Suur-Tampere) published the press release we sent them about this project.  We felt that this sort of hotel theme project is extremely useful for us, and we got valuable experience out of this.

Hanging out at the hostel’s public area

 

Students in this project: Anna Lipasti, Nelli Jokelainen, Jutta Kurkimäki, Heidi Välimäki, Tanja Valkama from Hotel and Restaurant management program and Natania Beukes ja Tellaneey Muriambihu from Namibia.

 Text and photos: Jutta Kurkimäki and Nelli Jokelainen