***This role is a temporary contract, between 9 and 12 months in duration***

ABOUT US 🚀

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.

LOCATION🌍

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 one day a week.

WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH 👨🏽‍🤝‍👨🏼

Working with the People Team, led by the Chief People Officer, we have a great opportunity for an experienced People Business Partner to join us to cover a period of maternity leave for between 9 and 12 months. As the People Business Partner, you will work closely with the functional leaders you support to shape and deliver the People strategy, coach and develop leaders, and help build and sustain high-performing teams within an engaging, inclusive and high-performance culture. 

WHAT YOU'LL DO 👩‍💻

• Coach and support leaders to deliver their People strategy, embedding high performance, engagement, accountability and clarity within teams. 

• Enable and support managers to deliver core People processes and the full employee life cycle consistently and confidently. 

• Lead the people aspects of organisational design, hiring and change, working directly with leaders and teams and ensuring People principles and Culture Code behaviours are upheld. 

• Identify talent and capability gaps and provide hands-on guidance to leaders on performance, development, succession, reward and role clarity. 

• Manage and resolve complex people and employee relations matters, ensuring compliance with employment legislation across relevant jurisdictions while applying pragmatism and sound judgement 

• Partner with the wider People Team to design, embed and continuously improve People products and practices, including Learning & Development, policies, systems and manager resources 

• Create and deliver manager-facing materials, workshops and guidance that make People processes clear, usable and effective in day-to-day work 

• Own ad-hoc People projects outside of core business partnering, personally driving delivery. Projects may include Pay Transparency, Employee Engagement, Inclusion, Recognition or Culture initiatives 

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR 👀

Experience & Qualifications:

• A Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Organisational Behaviour or a related field, or equivalent practical experience  

• 5+ years’ experience in a People Business Partner or similar role, ideally within a fast-growing tech, digital or e-commerce environment  

• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders while remaining hands-on and close to operational delivery  

• Strong understanding of people metrics and insight, using data to inform decisions and challenge assumptions  

• Experience owning People projects end-to-end, from problem definition through to delivery and embed 

Knowledge & Skills:

• Highly effective communicator, comfortable working with and presenting to all levels of the organisation  

• Strong facilitation skills, with the ability to enable productive discussion and engagement  

• Proven stakeholder management capability, with confidence to coach, challenge and support leaders  

• Commercially minded and analytical, able to balance detail with pace and pragmatism when translating business goals into People actions. 

• Comfortable operating in a lean People Team, balancing strategic thinking with hands-on execution 
  

WHAT WE OFFER 💯

• 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
  

OUR BEHAVIOURS 🏆

• 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.
  

Our people are key to our success. Our talented and diverse teams reflect the diversity of our customers and the communities in which we operate. Everyone brings different perspectives and experiences, and you don’t need to meet every requirement listed above to apply for this role.