Hostelworld has been a mainstay of the Irish business community for more than two decades. 

Founded in 1999, it was born in the dotcom bubble and survived through the internet’s forceful reshaping of the travel industry.

As a budget accommodation booking platform, Hostelworld has faced off slick competitors and retained its slice of market share by consistently changing its offering and tapping into the reasons people choose hostels in the first place; the bubbling vim that exists exclusively between solo travellers taking on a big adventure.  

The pandemic, however, threw the company into the red, as public health restrictions grounded planes and confined people to the tight boundaries of their homes and shores.The business of travel was on hiatus, and Hostelworld was exposed. 

It was a time of great stress for Caroline Sherry, Hostelworld’s chief financial officer, who felt a deep responsibility that the company would not submerge under her watch. 

A few weeks ago, Sherry, who is one of just four female CFOs of publicly listed companies in Ireland, sat down with Rosanna to talk about steering the company through the pandemic. She had just been announced as the winner of the management professional category of the IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year awards, for which The Currency was a media partner.  

What struck me reading the interview – Sherry’s first ever – was the honesty with which she spoke. Clearly driven and highly experienced, Sherry put no spin on what she has faced on the personal sacrifices it takes to be in her position. 

Here are five key takeaways from the interview.

1.    At times of turmoil, build a war room

Faced with an infinite pandemic and rolling restrictions on travel, Hostelworld still faced high overheads and little revenue. So Sherry and her team set up a “cash war room” and went through every cost line item and placed it in a “kill, pause or reschedule” column. 

This translated into a company-wide restructure, removing €7 million in costs from the business, raising €15 million of equity in June 2020, and negotiating a new €30 million term loan facility in February 2021 with HPS Investment Partners, a New York-headquartered capital market company. 

Bringing all of the relevant brains together in a room meant Sherry and her team were empowered to make big decisions quickly, eliminating the rut of analysis paralysis. 

2.    Expensive debt is bad, but it’s better than going under

While the €30 million term loan facility from HPS was necessary, it was expensive, and justified only by the intense pressure the company was under. 

The facility had an effective minimum 9.25 per cent rate and awarded stock warrants to HPS that could be converted into 3.3 million shares or a 2.85 per cent stake, at a peppercorn price of 1 cent.

It got Hostelworld through, but the first chance Sherry could take to refinance she did, announcing the win at the company’s recent AGM.

“Refinancing that debt – for me, I feel it was one of the last remaining legacies of that really difficult time,” she said. “So that was just great to be able to put that to one side and allow everyone to move on.”

3.    Invest in your future customers

The pandemic gave Sherry and Hostelworld’s chief executive Gary Morrison a chance to perform open-heart surgery on the business, taking on ambitious projects, while the glare of quarterly earning reports was dulled by Covid. 

They overhauled its technology stack; changed its commission structure, making it more friendly to the hostels listing with them; modernised its app; and built a social media network for Hostelworld travellers.

It meant that when takeoffs returned, Hostelworld was already in gear to capitalise on the voracious hunger for travel.  

4.    The personal is political

Working her way to the top of a publicly listed company in Ireland makes Sherry an exception, not the rule and she has had to take hard decisions to get there. 

A mother of two boys, Shery doesn’t try to make a case for bilocation and one of the striking aspects of her interview is her willingness to speak the truth of her own experience.

“Different points along the way have been challenging and it is hard sometimes to reconcile it to yourself. People talk about a balance. It’s not balanced,” she said.

“You’re sacrificing one pocket for another. And that’s hard to be fully comfortable with at all times.” 

The crunch of this sacrifice, however, is the wide-reaching significance of Sherry being a woman at the decision-making table.  

As she sees it: “I’m a mum of two boys. It was important, it is important to me, that they see an equal world and equal representation.”

5.    Succeeding when sector-agnostic 

Lastly, and this comes to mind in the context of the thousands of Leaving Cert students now looking to a future beyond the pre-ordained educational path they’ve followed until now, is Sherry’s own career strategy.

A chemistry graduate who considered studying medicine, it was refreshing to read that she didn’t always know what it was she wanted to do but chopped and changed, and pursued areas and jobs that taught her the most. 

“I’ve been sector-agnostic,” she said. “I’ve always thought if I get to a point where I don’t know how I can progress my career or I feel it is a bit limiting, then that’s the point where it’s time for me to look at something different.”

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Elsewhere last week, Sean and I reported on the financial problems enveloping Tara Mines, after the company announced it was shutting down production and temporarily laying off 650 workers. We examined why Europe’s biggest zinc mine was not currently viable.

I also caught up with former Ireland rugby international turned agent Niall Woods, who talked on our podcast about cutting deals for elite athletes, expanding internationally, and learning to view himself as an entrepreneur.

Rarely does the opportunity to learn from mistakes and have a do-over so cleanly present itself as in the case of Meili. Founded by Mike McGearty and Bobby Healy, both Cartrawler alumni, the travel tech company is beginning its offensive. McGearty talked to Rosanna.

Since 2015, Dawn Meats, the group owned by the Queally and Browne families, has had a 49 per cent stake in Elivia, the second-largest beef processor in France. Instead of exercising an option to take it over, the Irish shareholder is selling out. Thomas explained why.

The government is talking about a budgetary stimulus and the creation of a sovereign wealth fund. Given the nature of the economy, Colm McCarthy argued last week that both ideas are wrong. Stephen, meanwhile, looked at the growing urban-rural divide, while Sean wrote about how Japan is finally setting itself on the right economic course.