Haka House Queenstown Lakefront — Hotel in South Island

The WORST accommodation ever! I’ll give a negative stars if possible but I can’t to be able to leave a review.

I’ve been travelling & backpacking alone for years both for work & vacations & this is not my 1st hostel but this is definitely the worst.

I booked my stay through booking.com for 2 nights & my check-in & check-out dates are very clear in the booking confirmation. My arrival flight was kinda late & I arrived at this hostel around 09:00pm so there’s no one in the reception but they have self check-in system/kiosks so I checked in through there & didn’t encounter any issue at all. My assigned room number & bed was clear & the same for all throughout my stay. The self check-in kiosk even printed a transaction slip which confirm your arrival & departure dates which is exactly the same as my booking confirmation.

I left the hostel very early the next day (around 05:20am) since I’ve booked a Milford Sound cruise tour & I need to be in the pick-up location by 05:30am & will be gone practically the entire day & will have intermittent phone & internet connection. I received a phone call around 02:00pm right after the cruise from the hostel’s receptionist saying that I should’ve checked out earlier that day because my name is not in their system & not booked for today/tonight & someone else’s need to check in my bed so they have to put away my things on the room. I said that it is not right because I’m very confident that I’ve booked for 2 nights & my check-out date is the next day. I politely asked the receptionist if I can 1st double check 1st my booking confirmation & to kindly not touch my things & I will call them again. But they didn’t even listen. They move out my things from the room without my permission & just evicted & cancelled my booking. Mind you I was 4 hours away from Queenstown at this point & it’s raining so the phone & internet connection was just off. When I was able to contact them again, they just keep on insisting that my name is not in their system/listing & there’s nothing they can do about it. I even sent them copies of my booking confirmation & the printed transaction slip from their self check-in kiosk to support my claim but they just continue making excuses. Didn’t even bother to apologise & take ownership from their mistake that they double booked the bed. I called booking.com & they confirmed that the hostel accepted the booking that’s why there’s a booking confirmation. This hostel didn’t even offered any alternative accommodation as they’re fully booked & it’s up to me to find a room that I can stay for the night. When I returned to the room to double check that none of my belongings was left behind, one of the lady in the room told me that the receptionist took all my things because I didn’t pay or something. I felt so humiliated because of the false story that they have to invent to cover up their mistake. Avoid this hostel as much as you can. There are better hostels in Queenstown, more organised, & closer to the town center than this piece of trash...

Probably the worst hostel I've been to in New Zealand. For being $77 for a weeknight in an 8-bed dorm, you would expect something special like a hot tub or just.. anything. Instead you will probably be placed in a messy (for hostel standards) room full of people who literally live there permanently. On top of this it's a nearly 1km walk to town with nothing nearby and if your room is on the roadside you will have trouble sleeping due to the nonstop traffic all night. And hope you don't sleep cold, since the lack of AC will make it quite hot in the summer. Opening the window though just leads to louder car noises. Also no shelving for upper bunks.

All in all, it's everything I expect from the cheapest hostel in town - far walk from anything, directly on a loud and busy road, extremely hot with no AC, basic barebones rooms with no upper bunk shelving (a table stakes feature for non-budget hostels). Not worth it for the price. Would consider again if it were priced accordingly.

The basic facilities are fine as in bathrooms, kitchen, laundry - no complaints there - but a nice building doesn't counteract a...

One of the few hostel stays we had, and it was a decent experience in general.

The two stars taken off it was due to parking and noise.

🅿️ there’s not really parking on site since there’s only 5 lots, i don’t think it’s even free? So you would have to do street parking for the most part.

🔊 awoken by door slams and trucks passing by the main road at 0630, i didn’t manage to get back to sleep after. There’s also a lot of thumping on the level above us late into the night, rendering it a short sleep for me that night. The lounge area also started playing music that we could hear at 8am..

All that said, it was fairly valued, clean, easy to check in and a 10 minutes walk to the city centre with an amazing view as company!

🔑 the key to the room was via the app since i downloaded it, and was very convenient to get us into the room - without having to go to the reception.

🏔️ the views out of the room was perfect, we got lucky and arrived with blue skies keeping us company, and got to see the beautiful mountain and lakes in all its glory.

Definitely one to consider if you are looking for a...