El Chabot Hostel

This place has a lot of promise: it’s a beautiful building in a good location, parallel to a very nice restaurant street. With structural changes and some effort, the problems could be fixed. I hope things improve so people can enjoy what the place could be. Unfortunately, our stay was a disappointment. The rooms weren’t clean or ventilated, and they put a lot of people in each room without small bedside lights. With someone always sleeping or resting, we had to search for things in the dark using only the main room light. The kitchen shown in the booking photos turned out to be part of the attached restaurant and unavailable to hostel guests. The bathrooms were very dirty and didn’t seem to be cleaned during our stay. There was never any toilet paper, and the bins for used paper were always full. We felt especially uneasy about security. All the lockers were broken, so we weren’t given keys, and the bedroom doors were never locked. Since the restaurant was part of the hostel, people could come and go without anyone questioning them. We didn’t feel our belongings were safe.

The location is very good, our room was clean, and the staff were friendly. Some of them were volunteers, and we got a great price for a double room. Still, things felt disorganized and could have been more professional. There was some internal booking trouble, and we had to leave our room suddenly one afternoon because it had been booked for another couple. In the rush, we forgot one of our phones. Staff had our phone and WhatsApp numbers but didn’t contact us to let us know they had it.

The staff and location are good, and breakfast is included, toast with butter and marmalade. But the rooms are quite cold, there’s no kitchen for a hostel, and the place seems to be falling apart a bit.

The girl at reception was rude and unreasonable, and tried to charge me more than my reservation. I left. I don’t want to get ripped off.