Bridge Backpackers — Hotel in Nelson

Great location , broken facilities and rude unhelpful receptionist, poor management team and customer service

Stayed in the hostel for 8 nights 1 .On my first day stay I found the washbasin in the female dorm room was blocked and reported to receptionist, she has never tried to fix it at all , instead she shouting at me and blaming on me for washing clothes. The washbasin remained blocked during my eight days stay , no one has ever come to fix it The stair to upper bunk bed was awkward and I even felt down when I climbed down The locker underneath my bed was broken , no one has ever tried to fix it and not able to use the locker during the whole stay 4 . The receptionist used her key to enter my room while I was in the room without knocking the door at all . Same as the house keepers , I understand I stayed in the share room and the house keepers need to clean the room , but it doesn’t mean that the staffs have right to enter my room whenever they wanted every day using their own key without knocking the door at all and even left the door open after they left , no mention that I was in the room ! Very rude and unprofessional ! I felt no privacy and not secure at all , I have dressed this issue , but nothing has changed during my eight day stay , The shower room was dirty 6 . It was advertised free luggage storage facilities, however when I checked out I was not able to store my luggage even just a few hour as I have afternoon flight . Even just only one backpack and they have plenty of space . The receptionist said that because I didn’t stay in the hostel again after check out so I couldn’t store my luggage there , even I told her that I have afternoon flight, I just need to store my luggage , so i can go out and come back to pick it up . she refused and asked me to leave straight away after check out . I have been travelling all over the world, first time encountered such rude and inconsiderate receptionist and I didn’t felt respected and welcome at all

I don’t normally give negative review , but I would like to give zero star due to the awful experience I have had and no apology has given so far...

Stayed two separate nights before and after Abel Tasman (AT) walk. Literally central, on one of the main shopping streets. If you're here for the AT, Kathmandu, Macpac and Mountain Designs Warehouse are within 4min walk. So are multiple eateries (OMGness, the Turkish (Kebab Kitchen) was amazing and super friendly!) The AT pick up/drop off point for Wilson's shuttles (and water taxi, they do both), is from the YHA just around the corner, 2min walk.

The Bridge Backpackers is a bright, clean, friendly hostel. I'm a bit older than the average person staying here perhaps, and I was very comfortable. Had a single room each time so can't comment on the dorms. There was a bed, desk, chair, heater, wardrobe, spare blanket. In the unit with private toilet and shower, it was small but totally functional. You'll have to hire towels, I believe, if you don't bring your own. If it was a plane, I'd call Bridge Backpackers premium-economy😁 Sure, some of the rooms and facility might be a bit dated, but it has all you need, and my 2nd night's stay was more modern with a bright window and view. One of the two outlets in the walls wasn't working, but there was a multi-plug supplied in the room, so all sorted. No problem at all. I let them know so they could fix it in time, but not a priority.

There's no eating/drinking in the rooms (except water), so just be aware of that.

They kindly stored my luggage in the morning till my afternoon check in. Perhaps in the height of summer there might not be enough room behind the counter, but on this occasion mine was the only one.

They have stoves, and you can do your laundry for $2/load during daytime hours.

I stayed at another backpackers close by another time and they were friendly enough, but Bridge Backpackers is definitely a more modern, light vibe. If travelling with kids, I'd recommend Bridge over others (I haven't stayed at the YHA though, so can't comment on that). I would absolutely stay at Bridge again, and be bummed if they were fully booked and I'd have to go...

I can’t stress enough that you should not stay at this hostel. If you scroll down through other reviews you can see they have been having a significant bed bug problem for quite sometime and I can confirm they are not taking adequate measures to get rid of them. We had the unfortunate experience of booking one night in the hostel before doing the heaphy track and hadn’t checked reviews until we were on our way and then was horrified to scroll through review after review of bed bug tales. I naively thought maybe they had sorted it out since the last bed bug review one week ago. But they did not. I did a thorough inspection of our room and although I couldn’t see anything immediately you could see how old the mattresses and pillows are. From previous experience, when there’s such a bad beg bug infestation they usually have to destroy these kinds of things. But can confirm those bad boys are dire. Bed bugs aside they should be replaced because they’re actually quite gross.

One of the girls had the experience of another dorm member have a bed bug crawl across his laptop, to which they alerted hostel staff who could do what at that time but bless him he came up anyway and attempted to search for bed bugs lol not sure what he would have done when he actually found them. I woke up the next morning and was covered in bed bug bites. I react quite badly to them so looked pretty horrific and there were so many. We tried to get a refund but the hostel is now refusing to give refunds because they must realise they would go out of business having to refund everyone. Moral of the story, don’t stay here until they’ve properly closed down the hostel to fumigate and also just burned all...