Hostelworld brought Charlie Sheen to wombat's London

Over the past years Hostelworld.com has launched campaigns starring celebrities, such as Chris Eubank or 50cent. In 2017 they rolled out their clickbait campaign featuring scandalous Charlie Sheen.

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Having a filming in a fully booked hostel

We had been asked if this piece could be filmed at wombat’s CITY Hostel London on quite short notice - roughly a week before the filming.

If you have ever hosted a filming, you know how exhausting it can be to stand on the organisational side. Although One of our hostel managers was on annual leave at the time, Zsuzska, the remaining manager took on this challenge. Together with Katja, our front desk manager, she dealt with approximately a billion emails over the following days, shifted reservations and organized some additional manpower for the special occasion.

Fortunately, our hostel was fully booked and it was a day with plenty of departures and arrivals. Furthermore we had to hold back a double room in order to facilitate some takes there.

'Sorry, would you mind to check in a bit later? Charlie Sheen is shooting in your room.' So, that cost us some additional free drinks later in the evening ;)

We also had a huge group of 100 people having breakfast when filming started next to the breakfast area. Keeping noise at an acceptable level cost us another couple of rounds in our bar.

Overall, everything went smoothly and Charlie Sheen turned out to be a real asset to our hostel that day. He was laid back, hanging out on our terrace and in our chill-out areas, chatting and taking selfies with everybody.

The campaign behind it

Charlie`s clickbait campaign reached over 30 million views and had a broad reach throughout all social media platforms.

In 6 short videos, it plays with trending topics such as leaked and fake news. Hostelworld.com wanted to address misinformation around hostels and "highlight how their reputation, similarly to Sheen’s, is outdated".

As thedrum.com puts it: "The films in the campaign end with a twist, revealing Sheen is actually just enjoying all the facilities a modern hostel has to offer. The series will run as skippable video and pre-roll ads across YouTube and Facebook as well as sites like Ladbible, TMZ, and Vice."

A beautiful idea to polish up the reputation of hostels and we're glad to be part of it. Big ups to Hostelworld.com and their marketing team!

All in all Charlie, it was a pleasure having you with us!

Furthermore find all videos in our favourites playlist here:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2CuNnVU968&list=FLvIHEKHDZVkUNiN0VLhjtsg[/embed]