Hobson Lodge — Hotel in Waitematā

This hostel is everything a relaxed traveller would want. It is quiet, clean and comfortable. The kitchen is very large, and everyone cleans up after themselves. It might surprise some that the bathrooms are unisex but the shower and toilet stalls are all super secure and comfortable. The cleaning staff must have been checking on the bathroom regularly all day, because nothing was ever dirty. ||The entire hostel is always quiet - there is no chatty party vibe here. The place is smoke and alcohol free. If you want a party hostel, this place is not for you. In my 6 bed dorm the lights were off all day there was always at least one person napping so everyone did everything as quietly as possible. ||The bottom bunks have privacy curtains and there are very large security lockers under the beds, it was big enough for my entire 60L pack, and there is also a large cupboard for every person as well. There are power plugs by the head of every bed which is a huge plus, and there are free computers available to use as well!||The place is pretty central, it’s around the corner from the Sky Tower and a short walk to the Queen St shopping precinct. It took me about 20-30 minutes to walk to the docks, though there is a bus from Queen St. ||The only downside would be the lack of outdoor space. There was nowhere to hang things to dry, and nowhere to get some air. The rooms themselves are also not very climate controlled. There are fans in the rooms but no air con, so it gets pretty...

I was a new-comer to the city and I want a temporary place to stay, before I rent my own flat and Hobson Lodge was the one!|It was clean, quiet and relatively inexpensive. The beds were so comfy and even though I was staying in a 8 bedroom, I had no problem storing the 4 pieces of luggage I had. The kitchen was open 24 hour which is a big thing. The internet was quite fast and accessible in the rooms. The beds had curtains and boards(between beds) to maintain the privacy. There was a metal locker under the bed which was lockable and another counter-like locker to store your other things. It was safe as there were CCTV everywhere and I saw lots of people leaving laptops, jewelry, etc everywhere without any problems. The bathrooms and showers were getting cleaned frequently. There were complete appliances for you in the kitchen to make food and you only need ingredients!|A few things to consider though:|- This is not a party hostel! Alcohol is forbidden! And you have to be quite from 9 pm to 9 am!|- bathroom and showers were unisex, but each of them were in lockable rooms so you'd never have any problem with privacy|- the hostel is little far from Queen St where everything is located there, but not too far if you like walking. 15-20 mins of walking will get you anywhere in the city||There was one and only issue with this place and that was lack of space in fridges even though there were so many empty beds. I suggest getting a few more of them to the hostel...

Positives: Rooms are very comfy, with curtains.

Also I like the bathrooms and showers, they are usually very clean and ready for you to use it.

Everyone that I talked to that worked in the hostel was so nice and tried to solve my problems the best way.

Negatives: The Internet is a joke, I don't know why we can see people complaining about the internet from months ago and is still the same, very very bad 90% of the time.

And the most problematic thing: the kitchen, I don't know why but they don't make anyone follow the rules that they put onto the kitchen, so you always have people leaving the kitchen a mess, not cleaning their disses, sometimes waiting to clean just after they finished eating while there's a lot of people waiting for the things that they used to be cleaned, also people sitting on the tables chatting while you have people having to eat standing and others disrespectful things from the customers, but the hostel doesn't do anything about it and just let rude people dominate the kitchen.

They don't have enough space in the fridge, so the fridges are a mess, and there's also 2 fridges that don't get cold, so I had A LOT of my food...