Onefam Ribeira Hostel Porto — Hotel in Porto

Great hostel in general! Clean and new, not a lot of space to hang your belongings or wet towel etc, no fan in the bathroom. The staff were pretty good and made their best efforts to ensure everyone had a good time at the family dinner, if you've stayed at hostel one before, you know what the vibe is and you won't be alone, you will definitely make friends. Fran the manager made snacks and offered them to us throughout our stay, which was a lovely gesture, she really wanted everyone to have a good time and her kindness and fun personality really made that happen. She even gave us a wine tasting voucher which was really sweet. Unlike other hostel ones they have the same activities everyday, but if you ask them they might be able to give you some other suggestions on what to do.

How ever, something to really keep in mind is that this is not a safe area to walk around after dark. They take you out on a "pub crawl" which is great, but if you are a solo traveller of any kind I recommend that you do not walk home alone, minium 5 people. while I was there, 2 people had a knife pulled on them after the pubcrawl and one of Them was robbed and beaten up. They were not alone they were in twos two separate times. The staff didn't handle this situation well, as they took no responsibility in making sure everyone was in an ok state to get home, after having told them that one of the girls is in a bad state and guys keep trying to go up to her in a very strange planned way. One of my friends had to end a night early to walk this drunk girl back to the hostel, that's when my friend was Mugged and beaten, I returned 1 hour later luckily in an uber with another friends and nothing was being handled, no ice, no water, no calling the police as they didn't even know the emergency number, the manager was not called and that's due to a lack of education in what to happen in these types of emergencies. The company or manager needs to train and educate everyone so that when these types of emergencies occur, their staff are able to assist to their best ability. The volunteers are doing as they are taught, and if guidelines are not given then they cannot be followed. I would be very wary of walking around that city when the sun goes down. As much as people may say it is a safe city, clearly it is not, one of the club's we were taken to were disgusting and the men were looking as though they were working together to try spike drinks and take girls and Rob them. Again this isn't the hostels fault but if this happened at a specific club I wouldn't take guests there again. I was at the club for enough time to see what was going on and the staff left without even saying that they were leaving.. which was the start of a difficult situation and ruined my friends trip and gave me PTSD. You can say, oh but that's just a wrong place wrong time, but it wouldn't have happened if the staff were told to warn all guests of what happened 5 days before. My friend would more likely not have been attacked, and they should have taken the girl home them selves not have left it to care for this girl. We had to do something as we thought if this girl ended up in a bad way or being killed for that matter we would feel awful, which is why even though the staff knew what happened the few days before and that she was clearly not well, we had to take the care into our own hands. It's a difficult situation, but the hostel company needs to train their management and staff to handle pub crawls better, especially when taking out...

Having read the reviews online for Onefam Ribeira, I was looking forward to my stay. After leaving, though, there are a few things I wish I knew before, and a few things that I don’t think are acceptable.

Firstly, this is a party hostel. There are good systems in place to mean that you can get a good night’s sleep if you don’t want to party — most people leave the hostel by midnight to go out. But the cheap alcohol (€4 bottle of wine!) and drinking games run by the hostel every night give you a good impression of what I found the vibe to be.

I had expected a social environment, but what I found was more than that. When I was checking in, I thought I must’ve missed something when I booked as they told me it was a “social party hostel” — but having checked, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t come across on the website (which says the hostel is “a captivating blend of comfort and culture”).

In terms of the facilities, they’re fine - pretty modern and clean. The dorms are a bit crowded with some people with big bags unable to fit them in the lockable drawers provided. The bathroom attached to my dorm was really big and nice.

My main problem with the hostel were the drinking games. I joined the games one night. We played a game called “drinking dice”, where each person takes a turn to roll the dice. Each roll of the dice has a challenge attached, shown on a big board provided by the hostel. Think “truth or dare”, or “never have I ever”. However, some of the challenges in my view were unacceptable in 2024. One was “drink and kiss”, where you have to spin the bottle and then kiss the person it lands on as well as both drink. There was another one were you were encouraged to take a shot of alcohol off another person’s body (as in pour the shot directly into a body part). Given the group playing were all men apart from 2 women (plus the female hostel volunteer), this created a weird vibe. I don’t know how the women felt but there was a lot of awkward shuffling when these challenges came up. I imagine it was even more uncomfortable given some of the guys were older (one guy was 34).

I get the idea is to get to know each other through games like this but this is not what a consensual environment looks like.

There were also some comments from some of the male guests during the “drink and kiss” challenge that made me, as a gay man, feel uncomfortable — things like “ew, what if I had to kiss another man, gross!”. Not directly offensive as such but certainly not the most inclusive of environments. The hostel volunteer didn’t say anything to these comments.

Nothing non-consensual happened in the end (I think), but it would be easy to imagine how something bad could happen. It was a bad vibe. I spoke to two other (female) guests about this and they agreed.

I regret that I didn’t say anything at the time, but equally I was kind of taken aback that this sort of thing was still happening in well-reviewed hostels in 2024. Instead, I just quietly walked away. I’ve stayed in hostels where drinking is encouraged but the vibe is great and comfortable. This was not it.

I don’t blame the hostel volunteer for this environment. She was just a volunteer, and I’m pretty sure will not have been given any guidance or training on how to create a safe and inclusive vibe. It highlights, in my view, the flaw in not having paid, professional staff members around at certain times of the day, running these activities.

I hope Onefam reflects on whether this sort of environment is...

I stayed at the hostel for 5 nights. The hostel is located next to São Bento station.

The hostel relie only on volunteers reception staff is not customer oriented and don't know how to be welcoming. But the other staff (who does the other activities) is frendlier and nicer

The mattress was uncomfortable with a dark elastic sheet (never changed during my stay) very thin pillow. The room were I stayed was 6 beds mixed dorm room. My bed was in the attic so I need to go up for another level (the room was already in the 5th level.

There's only one bathroom shared for the 6 beds and only get cleaned once per day. So the cleanliness depends too much on the other roommates. I think one bathroom is not enough for 6 people.

There's only one shared toilet outside of the room (on the 2nd floor). Next to the kitchen.

There's a fully equipped kitchen. There are 2 small fridges for the whole hostel and it doesn't really cool. So try to consume your food as fast as possible.

The hostel arranges intertainment events evrey day (tours, dinner, drinking games, bar tour). There interesting.

On my last night stay I was drugged when I was out I think I vomited (but I don't remember) anyhow on the next day one of the staff asked me to pay a fine (25 euros) for vomiting which is unwritten and was not advised on the check-in and the value is more than 2 nights of stay at the hostel.

I felt unfair to be asked to pay a specific amount as a punishment and in an agressive way. Maybe if I was asked politely I would be happy to accept the fine.

Anyhow I refused politely and mentioned I will definitely pay something to the cleaning person but I pay the amount I think I want to pay.

Anyhow the rude staff returned telling me that I don't need to pay the fine and refunded me the next 2 nights I booked (I gave the amount to the cleaning lady).

Overall experience, the hostel is not comfortable in anyway, the price is very good and nice activities. From a prospective if 6 year-guesthouse-owner I think the hostel should hire full time staff not only volunteers who lack customer...