Hostel Arrabal

The owner was great and helped us with everything we needed for excursions and getting around the city. The rooms are modern, bright, and very spacious, and the place is close to Buenos Aires’ historic center. Really good value for money, I’d recommend it.

The price and location are good, and the rooms are nice. But the owner is nosy, gossipy, and judgmental. The place is filthy, the showers are disgusting, and the sheets don’t get washed. He keeps threatening to close the hostel and only turns on the heating or air conditioning very late, in the middle of winter or summer.

The place itself is nice, but the owner made it the worst experience. He’s bald and far too involved in things that aren’t his business. He goes into rooms when people are out without permission, and may only mention it if you ask, supposedly to fix something that he then doesn’t fix. It feels nosy and intrusive, and ignores the privacy and respect you should get for a room you pay for. He threatens to close the residence and changes the rent whenever he feels like it. He raised it one month for the next even though it had just gone up the month before, using inflation as his excuse. The peso hadn’t devalued when he raised it, and he carried on raising the rent even when inflation fell. He takes advantage of students, especially people from countries that use dollars, as if we have money to give away. Speak up and he’ll tell you to leave and find somewhere else. In winter he waits until it’s almost over to turn on the heat; in summer it’s the same with the air conditioning, and he only turns it on at night. When things break, he fixes them whenever he feels like it or acts as though he forgot. He’s unpleasant, arrogant, disrespectful, despotic, and opportunistic.

Great atmosphere, and a good spot if you’re arriving with nothing.