Apple Inn Mong Kok - Hostel

The price is fair and the location is convenient, but the beds were dusty and the floors sandy. I wouldn’t recommend this hostel to backpackers. During my stay, staff moved my bags and personal belongings to another room without telling me, apparently for their room allocation convenience. I had to go back to my original room, which was already occupied by new guests, to retrieve my passport. Thankfully, it was secured in my locker with my own lock, so they couldn’t access it. The building is full of similar hostels with competitive prices. Please think carefully about security before choosing the cheaper option.

The rooms are cramped and smell, and the building is pretty run down. Service can be okay or poor depending on who’s at reception. Don’t count on getting the free snacks and drinks, you might get lucky. Laundry is a lottery depending on who else wants to use it, and cleanliness is close to poor.

The free washing and drying machines, including detergent, were useful. The showers had free shampoo and body soap, the wifi was decent, and the air conditioning worked well. I also liked being close to the MTR in a more local area with nice restaurants. Still, the bedrooms and bathrooms were tiny. My top bunk had a big metal bar digging into my back, and the mattress was very thin. The fire alarm randomly beeped during my stay. The staff were fine, but didn’t offer the support or advice I’m used to at other hostels. I stayed here four of my five nights in Hong Kong and was leaning toward giving it four stars, since I had nothing to compare it with and thought maybe this was as good as it gets. Then I spent my last night at another hostel with much better facilities and staff, a more central location, and a lower average price. That made Apple Inn’s shortcomings pretty clear. I hadn’t realized the weekday rate was relatively low but the weekend rate hugely inflated, and four nights over the weekend made the stay quite expensive. In short, it’s bad value if you stay over a weekend.

The room smelled really bad and wasn’t clean at all. The staff weren’t helpful or nice, and the service was terrible. There was no plug, hair dryer, toilet paper, slipper, TV, or phone access to reception. The air conditioning was dirty, and the noise from other people made it hard to sleep. Booking.com hasn’t done a good monitoring job. It was so bad, I felt like they’d opened the room just for fun instead of running a business. I didn’t like anything.