By 2013, the vibrant and colourful party hostel scene in Budapest had developed all of the potential for an incredible community of party-seekers living life together to the fullest, but it was rife with rivalry and mistrust between competing hostels. Our founder was inspired to bridge these gaps, and bring these different groups together in their love of new experiences and shared interests, taking on the management and mediation of running communal events in order to build a community that was simply better, together. The launch year of PartyBookers saw weekly boat parties, pub crawls, scavenger hunts and foam parties taking over the party tourism scene, with guests and staff from different hostels meeting and mingling in a setting created just for them. Since we started small, with very few of our own staff, most of these events were partly run by the hostel staff themselves, in cooperation with the venues, with the PartyBookers crew at the wheel. In 2014, we launched the Budapest Boat Party website, marking the very first time that our parties were available to book online as well as through our hostel partners. By the end of 2015, we had recruited our first team of in-house event staff, coming from all areas of the world, living in our very first Partybookers staff flat.

The beginning of 2016 saw an entirely new crew of PartyBookers staff come on board, and some of them are still with us today. This was the year that pivoted us into the direction of real greatness, all thanks to the amazing people who joined the team. In 2017, we launched the Bingo Bar Crawl brand, and a few more key members of the team came into our lives. We produced our very first metro festival for Mega Events, and ran our first 900-person boat party, which is still our record today. In 2018 we finally launched the official PartyBookers website, and started organising daytime activities for the first time, like food tours, city walks and bike trips to the water park, as well as day trips to the Balaton lake and the Miskolc cave baths. By 2019, our team had grown to over 40 people in peak season, and we had re-branded with a new logo, new uniforms, and a very clear message: PartyBookers is where sightseeing and party culture meet. Nothing seemed impossible anymore, and the future looked as bright as the sun.

We all know what happened this year. The pandemic that shook the world at large affected nobody more than the travel and party industries - imagine the fall-out for a company that was solidly in both. Most similar businesses shut down completely, and let all of their staff go immediately, without pay. That wasn’t what happened with us. Our staff willingly hunkered down in their various accommodations, with the rent paid and a weekly stipend to buy food and necessities while we waited things out. Our managers were put to work as much as possible, and in May we began working on a brand-new project: Ultimate Budapest. More on this later. In July, with borders open again to only EU travelers, we did the best we could to re-launch to a very different audience than what we were used to… until they shut it all down again completely in September. Not skipping a beat, the whole team turned their efforts to the launch of Hoff House, our very first food & beverage location, in the hope of riding out the next wave of travel bans by serving a local audience instead. In just a few short weeks, Hoff House made an instant name for itself as Budapest’s hottest and most colourful new expat hangout spot, despite the mandated 11PM closing times. By mid-November, even that was impossible. All we had left was a motivated team of loyal staff, bright hopes for the future, and a kitchen making some of the best comfort food money could buy, delivering to the doors of a very broken city.

On January 1st, 2021, the sun was shining and the air was warm and promising. We knew, that very first day, that this year would be different from the last. But we had no idea just how different. Lockdowns didn’t end until much later in the year, but the wheels were already in motion. In March, we were notified that the EU had granted us about 40,000EUR in funding for the proposal we had submitted for the Ultimate Budapest project. In April, our affiliate partners signed a 7-year lease on Nomád Traveler’s Bar, a spacious, breezy location right in the heart of the party district. In May, we launched the Ultimate Budapest website, and Hoff House finally opened its doors again, with a brand-new terrace permit allowing our guests to enjoy the sun and fresh air after months of being stuck at home. In July, Nomád opened its doors for the first time, and continued to grow and develop throughout the year, and PartyBookers started running pub crawls and boat parties again for the first time. By August, with borders open and tourists suddenly flocking to the city in escape of continued restrictions back home, it was almost too much for us to handle the sudden demand for everything PartyBookers had been waiting to offer again for so long. But, just like riding a bike, it all came back as naturally as we could have hoped, again thanks to an incredible, passionate team that had stuck through it all and come out better and stronger than ever.

Our work is far from over, but we have nothing but the highest hopes and aspirations for what is to come. We started the year with a team trip to Barcelona to visit our friends at Stoke Travel who, like us, had persevered through the pandemic in unfaltering belief in what we do, and why it was so worth the wait. In keeping with our founding philosophy of “better together”, we partnered up on some really cool ventures in 2022, as well as launching some ground-breaking new developments of our own. The Ultimate Budapest team is ever growing, with more and more partners joining us every week, and a top-rated app development company helping us launch the Ultimate Budapest app in May 2023. An app for new arrivals to the city to find their way, get their bearings, discover the hidden gems of the city, and browse and book all of the very best experiences the city has to offer. We also couldn’t be more excited to have moved back to our former, much larger party boat, with a fresh team of in-house hospitality staff taking our service to the next level. We’ve downsized our pub crawls to make them more sustainable for the community, allowing us to offer a more diverse selection of nightlife tours to choose from. And of course, our city walks and daytime activities are coming back again this year, now with even more knowledge and experience behind them. The pandemic now seems like a distant nightmare, and we have nothing but love and pride for our team, and in the struggles we have overcome together.