Downtown Guesthouse Reykjavik — Hotel in Reykjavik

Our stay at Downtown Guesthouse was complex, so I want to give it a careful and considered review. The TL;DR/ short version: don’t expect any support if you have trouble checking in, or any other issues. The place is an okay place to stay, at best - 4 of 10 stars. Management and hosts are non-existent. Make sure you get an emailed code sent to you before arrival: I still don’t have one - more on that later. -- Before the “host” can respond to this review, let me point out, they trash anyone who writes this type of review as if it is the guest's fault they did not receive a code. Since the automated system through Expedia must be flawless, the guest is lying if they say they did not receive it. (See reviews from March 12 and March 6, 2024. ) I called the property contact number - could not even leave a message. I messaged via Expedia, I texted the property directly. Expedia is not the organization that never responded to me, a stranded traveler outside their establishment. That non-response rests squarely on the shoulders of Floki and Delve - the apparent hosts. -- Our overall stay was fine. I mean it is essentially a bed and a shower, right? So how much is there to review? “Guesthouse” implies you are a guest. And as a guest, I expected some form of “host”, Please know. There is no host here. Even Hostels have more support for travelers than this “guesthouse “ I would say the best part about the “Guesthouse” was that I could discern no bedbugs with my standard blacklight bedbug check. But that was after I was able to help release my husband from the bathroom. He became stuck when the door did not slide on the track correctly, so rather than just slide the door open, one has to (from the interior of the bathroom) lift the door to get the track to engage again. Here is the annotated details of my star rating: Price: * 5 out of 10 stars. Reykjavik is simply the most expensive city I have ever been in. So the price was lower than most others, however the value was exponentially lower. If you think the cost of visiting Iceland on a long lay-over is worth it, then do yourself a favor and spend the extra. $125 -$200 (17.000 to 27.500 ISK at the time of this review) for a real hotel. Location —- no rating. There are a lot of hotels in this area, so location is not a relevant rating. Amenities and facilities. 2 of 10 stars. We had an en suite bathroom, thank goodness. It was well worn. The shower head leaked and gave a maddening drip drip. But by laying the shower head in the drain we eliminated the noise.  The room itself was basically the two economy bed frames with a foam topper on each, two cafe chairs and a shower.  Not too much to get excited about. But as to the shared kitchen? Meh. Fridge with other people’s food, and a kind of make-your- way-to-your-own-cup-of- coffee vibe. Guests were considerate and there was no mess from other tenants/ guests. Cleanliness: 8 of 10 stars. Shout out to the sweet woman doing housekeeping. The room, as spare as it was, had very clean sheets and well made beds. The bathroom is worn, but I believed it to be clean. Communication, check-in and management: multiple negative stars. I thought that for $410 for two nights we would expect to have access to a code to let us into the host-free building. Or to have the phone call answered when we called the property to get instructions to access the building. Or to have my emailed message replied to, or when receiving a text finally from the property, to have it say more than “please text me”. And when I do text said number, I would expect a reply. Any reply. Like “hello” or “sorry for the trouble, here is the code to get in” or “kiss my a, or “go to...

TL:DR - Do not book here. Nothing about it is right. You'll notice that every good review they have is from literally years ago.

The location is fine, just down the street from the pond. The room appeared to be clean enough and would have been acceptable under different circumstances. The housekeeping person who we spoke with was very nice. That is where the positives end.

The website states different information about check in time and front desk service availability in different places. We arrived at 1 pm, the time at which front desk personnel was supposed to be there, according to their site. There is no sign indicating the guesthouse, but there is an easily-identifiable yellow door. They sent a code for entry and we walked into a dark, musty lobby area that was abandoned. We dragged our bags up the stairs and found a key with our reservation name on it for room 6. We entered the room, and it had a double bed. We specifically booked a room with two beds. We are two adult people who are not in a relationship and we need two beds, which is why we booked (and they confirmed) a two-bed room.

We went out to the lobby again and waited. And waited. And waited. For anyone to show up. There was a sign that had a phone number and also said there was a "front door phone" with which to contact the owners. We called. We called and called and called. No response. Oh, and there IS NO FRONT DOOR PHONE. There is no phone at the desk. No phone at all - so if you call, you're calling with your international minutes. Oh you don't have international minutes? No dice! We sat, and waited. Eventually, a very nice young woman came in. We assumed she was a front desk type person, and asked her about the twin room - she said they were sold out for the night. We asked if there was a cot or something. She said no. We started to get agitated, and she called the owner, who had no problem picking up for her. The owner confirmed that we were out of luck.

This place also advertises an airport shuttle if pre-requested - this is apparently a flat-out lie. I emailed them three (?) separate times to ask them about it, starting two weeks before our trip and received no response. I also tried their contact form on their site - no response. So we also asked this young lady about the shuttle and she had never heard of such a thing, and only said that we could catch a bus from nearby. That may be - but literally the only reason we booked here was for that shuttle.

So we left. We booked through Hotels.com and my friend spent 45 minutes on the phone with them trying to resolve this. Hotels.com couldn't get through to them either. They were able to find us accommodations elsewhere for no additional cost, thank goodness. But we still had to take our 40-lbs-each luggage up the main hill to move, and it was still two and a half hours of our precious little time in Iceland wasted on trying to fix this guesthouses failures.

Customer service is not prized in Iceland in the same way that it is in the US and some other places - I am find with that. But if you are going to own and operate a lodging where tired, lost, vulnerable visitors to your city are supposed to stay, you should care even a little tiny bit. These folks don't seems to care at all.

And judging by their responses to these critiques, they are not cut out for running a business. And to charge $150/night for service like that?...

Look, the room was nice, the beds were comfy and the location was great and for that reason I'll give 3 stars... but everything else was terrible.

It said on the booking confirmation that the check in desk was open from 9am to 3pm. This is not true. After flying from the other side of the world and landing at 6am, I got to the guesthouse at 8am. There was freezing rain and no way to get into the building. There wasn't even an address on the door nor any indication of the guesthouse anywhere at the address. Finally after banging on the door for 20 minutes, a guest let us in. We couldn't get a hold of the administration, so for an hour we sat there trying to get a hold of the booking agent. Finally the booking agent was able to get a hold of the administrators. They told us they would not get there until 12pm and we had to wait. I left my baggage and came back hours later. I was banging on the door for 10 minutes right next to where the desk was and no one answered. Finally a guest left giving us an opportunity to go in. The guy at the desk was sitting there and didn't simply stand up and open the door as we were getting soaked outside.

He gave us a key and we went to our room. He never gave us a door code!

We get back that night and again can't get in. I had to spend another 2 hours trying to get a hold of the booking agent for them to get a hold of the administrator to get the door code.

I finally got it and was able to get in.

We never saw anyone working there for the rest of our 5 day stay. There were other guests trying to check in who had the same problem and they came around 12:30pm! No one was at the desk!

They ended up just reaching over the counter and taking a key instead of waiting hours, or who knows, days?

One of the windows in our room wouldn't completely close causing cold air to get in every night.

It wasn't the worst, but it really was stupid. Totally terrible service. I understand the low price now. Please talk to the staff days ahead of time over the number on their site. Don't email as they...