I have travelled the world for business and for pleasure; stayed in cheap backpackers and 5–star luxury. Never, ever have I experienced what I experienced at this hostel.
The hostel has some good things to recommend itself, namely the proximity to Darling Harbour and the City, the outward appearance of this Victorian mansion and a decent communal kitchen. But that’s where the good things end I’m afraid.
Firstly, and most importantly, is the extremely rude and aggressive manager. It astounds me that anyone ever hired him to run a hospitality establishment. Far from a pleasant “good evening” when I arrived, I was confronted with abruptness, rudeness, scepticism, mistrust, insults and finally aggression … all because I dared to hold the manager to the booking and price that had been agreed (I have never seen a booking that was so completely wrong!). Thankfully it was all clearly laid out in emails that had been sent back and forth proving my position.
When asked if he treated all his guests as he was treating me, he responded with “Yeah, so what?!”. I was forced to ask multiple times for the key to the room for which I had paid, while he showed significant aggression in refusing to hand it to me. After receiving several unjustified personal insults I was finally left to go to my room in tears. Completely unacceptable!
I note that the owner has responded to other bad reviews on this site with defensive comments that blame the guests! They can’t ALL be rude, aggressive or have misrepresented their experience. He does this instead of addressing their concerns and apologising for their experiences. This too is an unacceptable way to run a hostel. In truth it is holding me back from saying more about the shocking behaviour of the manager.
Even if the staff had been halfway to normal, I would still not recommend this hostel:
- Rooms are noisy as sound carries between rooms and from the hallway easily.
- A lot of rooms have skylights – great idea for those who like to wake up at the crack of dawn. If not a room with a skylight, you can pick a room that opens to the main busy street complete with noisy trucks and buses.
- The showers shoot water every way but down and it isn’t very warm.
- Some rooms are very, very tiny.
- The electrics are dodgy in the old part of the hostel; loose wires in lights and overloaded powerpoints.
- The rooms are very cold with only a tiny oil heater provided to warm up the room – okay in the tiny rooms but not the big rooms.
- Thin towels and thin sheets.
- Pathetically small TV.
And if you choose to stay here despite all of these reasons not to, consider that it is very bad value. Down the road you can have a twin ensuite room, with fridge, big flat screen TV and coffee/tea facilities, all for $10 less than a shared room in this hostel. And as a special bonus you get pleasant helpful staff that don’t seem to resent guests interrupting their TV viewing.
You have been warned!
