International Youth Hostel — Hotel in Paris

WARNING: This is singularly the worst hostel my friends and I have ever stayed in, from many across Europe and the World. I cannot stress that enough.

STAFF: Rude, dismissive and unhelpful, it is almost as if they do not want you to be there. Several times when we asked questions regarding our booking, for example "I have emailed & rang to cancel some days of the booking, can you tell me if that has been done and I won't be charged?" and "Can you tell me if my room is shared or private" and "Is my second booking in the Bastille Hostel?" - to every question we were told the same answer, "No its fine". This made no sense to the question and was just repeated over and over until we were too frustrated to carry on the conversation.

Furthermore, on requesting some water from the staff at night time, a party member was refused water because he had no shoes on. Is this prison? Why does he have to have shoes on to buy a bottle of water?

ROOMS: Very, very poor. The beds were uncomfortable, with poor bed sheets and all of the party received bites from bugs even when the windows were closed. Clearly they were in the bed.

You are not allowed in your room between 11am and 3pm. This means you are forcefully removed at 11am by the staff, so that others can clean your room. During this time you cannot gain access even to get an item from your bag, eg a coat if the weather turns bad!

As a group of 6 we changed 2 separate bookings of rooms 5 times in 6 nights. This meant that we had to check out of a room before 11am after two nights, pack all our belongings back into our bags and store them in the luggage room until we could re-check in to a different room after 3pm. The luggage room clearly not being monitored correctly as we witness another guest complaining that his bag had been stolen from the room. This means you cannot keep valuables stored in a safe throughout the duration of your stay.

There was one plug socket in a four bedroom shared room, and this was at high level so that your charging phone hangs from its wire precariously 4 foot (over 1m) above the ceramic tile floor.

The bathrooms are tiny, not particularly clean and even in the more expensive sister hostel 'Bastille Hostel' which is part of the same building and shares the staff and services, the rooms do not contain their own toilets, this is shared by up to 10 rooms, making for some very uncomfortable waits when others are using the bathrooms at peak times.

SERVICE: Generally awful. Wi-Fi is free, but it is turned off between 1am and 12:30 pm the next day, this means you can only use the internet from 3pm til 1am in reality as you are not in your before that, unless you use the plastic seats in the entrance lobby. The signal is, however, so weak you would be lucky to actually get on the Wi-Fi in any of the rooms we stayed in across four different floors.

Breakfast is a not fresh small baguette with one bit of butter and one bit of jam, neither of which covers the bread - to get more you have to pay 30 cents per item. Small mouth sized piece of cake offered, carton of room temp orange juice and hot drink. Again, pay extra for more. Leaves you ready to eat a proper breakfast around 30 - 60 minutes later, which can infringe on time for sightseeing and just adds a cost you think is included.

There is an extremely poor selection of maps and information about the area at reception - don't even bother trying to ask the staff, that would probably be greeted with the response "No it's fine" again. Bizarre individuals.

OVERALL: All of these things are unacceptable even for a budget hostel. We have never witnessed anything like it and spoke to others complaining of all the same things. I cannot stress how much you should not book...

Really bad hostel , no access to room for 4 hours a day! 0 Facilities, not working wifi, dirty walls. No soap and sanitizers during COVID time on floors or rooms, no ventilation. Many hidden costs.

On our first morning, exactly at 11AM someone knocked our room and straight away entered the room, it was a man. I felt so insecure, so we left, as apparently they needed to clean room, on our return we were told we don't have access to room at all for 4 hours from 11 to 3pm even we were staying there for 5 days, you can not even grab your staff, like passport in emergency for example. Apparently, no one gave us any instructions while checking and when booking it doesn`t show clearly on main page that you wont have access at all for 4 hours. It was just mentioned that rooms are closed from 11 to 3, but no one said you will be refused to even access your own belongings. When we demanded to have access and questioned why we cant use it they could not give us any proper answer.

2nd Point Shower - zero stars. First a fall, there was no light at all for 3 days, so you shower in complete darkness, plus in one of the cabins handle was just falling off (for entire stay - 5 days)

3rd point ROOM Mattresses are kind of plastic so every move is super loud, every time i moved my sister was waking up. As sister slept on top bunk bed you can see how bed was bended inside, so you kinda sink inside of a mattress, so she slept very poorly all these days. Room doesn't have any ventilation and you have to open window if you want to breathe, bare in mind windows facing inner terrace where people are constantly speaking and laughing. There is no chair or a table, but there are no even simple hooks. in my room 106 curtains were dirty and 2nd safe was not working, so we were left with 1. Room is tiny but light was so poor that it was constantly dark.

4th point STAFF - never seen such variety of receptionists, some did not care at all, some were super rude. You must to leave key with reception and guess what if you come back and want to collect your key, they ask for a paper that you stay there, and if you left your passport and paper in a room you wont be given they key! When you complain about important things they just don`t care, very inhuman. When we came late one night hotel door was closed and it was written that receptionist goes around the property, so we waited to be let in!

5th POINT FACILITIES There are literally ZERO - toilet seat broken in ladies and its only 1 women and men toilet on the whole floor. No light, no even SOAP or sanitizers next to common or room sinks (during covid times!) so its not even COVID compliant place! They dont provide towels you need to rent them. On first evening we wanted to get towels but were told they rented all of them! so we could not even take shower!!! Forget about hair dryers or irons! Wifi never worked. No...

I stayed at this hostel for 3 nights and wasn't exactly impressed. I have been travelling for over a month now around Europe and have stayed in roughly 5 hostels and this one is so far is the one I've been the least pleased with.

The things that weren't great about my experience: The breakfast is VERY basic (coffee/tea and ONLY a baguette with small jam and butter that's it, NO fruit, cereal etc.) The rooms are closed from 10am-3pm everyday for cleaning, meaning that you can not be in your room at all during that time. They will come and ask you to leave if you try to stay (I was sick one morning and slept in but they asked me to leave at 10:30am and when I said I didn't mind if they cleaned while I was still in the room, they repeated again that I had to leave). If you leave your room during that time and you forgot something in the room, your key won't unlock the door anymore. You then have to go down to reception and ask for assistance. There is only one tiny washroom (with no mirror) for the an entire floor of around 10-15 rooms (you have a sink + mirror in your room, there are 3 showers). If you are in a mixed dorm and want to get changed in the washroom it isn't very easy. You have to leave your key at reception whenever you leave and you must hold onto your receipt of payment to show them when you want the key back which isn't horrible but it is a little annoying.

Good things: The staff at reception were nice and accommodating. Pretty good location with lots of restaurants etc. near by and 10-13 minute walk to transit. Not a lot of cosy places to hang out in the common area (no couches, just chairs and tables) but still some places to sit. There are small safes that lock to put some of your things...