For example:
The owner is trying to make a profit (rather than a hard salary) and it's probably best if they're fairly detached or things go haywire, but a good hostel owner wants the hostel to be beneficial and enjoyable for the guests (regular employees) because it benefits everyone.
The hostel staff are management. They are much more involved with everyone, but still try to remain detached somewhat, since they might have to kick a guest out for bad behavior. Often they were previous guests, and those people often make the best staff (managers) because they know all sides of it. They get direct orders from the owners and try to make that work.
Guests are the equivalent of a company's employees. They are all there for different reasons and get all different kinds of things out of it. Some want to spend most of their day hanging out with other guests and staff. They're not in a hurry to leave and they get a lot of their satisfaction from the comfort of the hostel and the people they're with. Seeing the area is sort of tangential to them. Others are trying to see everything they can, they don't care about making friends, they have a plan and goals. On the extreme end, they might do something like cut in line to make sure they make the list for the next tour. In fact if they can't, they're probably going to another hostel.
Anyways it's a loose analogy, but everyone is there for different reasons that overlap at different points. They're not really all working towards the same goal, but again, their goals likely overlap. Nobody bats an eye that the goal of a guest isn't to make the owner the most profit, or vice versa. You can reasonably expect that most people are going to move on sooner or later. People may or may not become really socially involved, depending on what they want. Some hostels are large and less sociable, others are tightly knit and cozy. I can draw parallels for days.
I mean, obviously a hostel _is_ a type of company, but I still think it works as a helpful analogy. Most of the things I roll my eyes at or that people don't like about companies, you could try to apply to the hostel analogy and it will break the illusion of that thing being good. If people thought of their work more in that context, there might be a little less company koolaid being pushed around these days and a little more satisfaction for everyone.