Oxygen Hostel

The staff and service were excellent, but bed bugs and the noise of people coming and going from other pods all night made it hard to sleep. Those issues wipe out any value for me. I paid for two nights and left for a hotel after the first, even though I'd recently stayed nearby and thought the price was hard to beat. I should've read the reviews more carefully. Edit: The owner replied three and a half months later, ending with, “We will immediately inspect and treat the area. Thank you for your feedback.” Maybe I'm cynical, but that felt completely insincere.

The service, cleanliness, and location were all very good. The capsule rooms, though, felt cramped, uncomfortable, and claustrophobic. There was also much less public seating than at other hostels.

We picked this place for a one-night layover before our train to Barça. The location was handy, but what we'd expected to be a quick, cheap stop became expensive and stressful. A couple of hours after arriving, we found a bed bug. We photographed it and told reception, but they weren't much help. They asked whether we'd put our bags in the pods, which came across as blaming us, even though our bags wouldn't fit. I'm not sure whether the language barrier contributed to that frustrating exchange. They refused our refund request and offered another pod instead. We didn't feel safe spending the night in a pod that might have more bed bugs. We ended up washing all our clothes and finding somewhere else to stay. That turned our quick stop in Madrid into a whole ordeal. Hopefully the recent reviews mean this gets sorted soon.

The idea is cool, and the staff were at least somewhat helpful, but it was really hot. Beds 9 and 10 had their doors open while the others were closed, so maybe pods in the middle of the room are cooler than those at the far end of the ventilation ducting. We kept our door open and still spent the whole night sweaty. We also paid €140 for two people for one night because it was Pride.