Fabrizzio's Petit — Hotel in Barcelona

I have only left one other negative review on Google, so I hate to leave a bad review but I do think I can explain my experience in hopes that it can be helpful to Fabrizzio's Petit.

For the positives, the staff is really nice, the hostel is clean, the kitchen is well stocked and the patio is great!

For the negatives, this place left me stressed out on two different occasions. First, when I made my booking on their website I was sent an email that my reservation is not complete until it is confirmed by the hostel. I did not hear back from the hostel after a week so I decided to email them because hostel rates were going up in Barcelona and I wanted to ensure I had a place to stay. I emailed them over 5 times throughout a 2 week period and heard nothing. I then tried to send them a Facebook message. Their number is a Spanish number so you cannot call unless you also have a Spanish number Finally, I created a fake booking.com reservation just so I could contact them. They told me they were no longer receiving emails from Gmail addresses. I understand that this isn't their fault, but they need to let people know this and give an alternative for contact instead of just leaving you hanging and wondering if you have a place to stay.

Second the hostel talks about 24 hour reception but over the weekend their doorbell was broken on Friday and Saturday. on Friday there was no notice so I was locked out at 130am in the morning without any way to contact them. On Saturday there was a note on the buzzer that it was broken with information to call the hostel to let you in. This number was once again only a spanish nunber which leaves you unable to contact them unless you have a spanish phone or a spanish sim. Being locked out late at night as a woman in a new city isn't the best feeling

All in all, I think this could have all been fixed if the hostel created a Whatsapp number and...

Wasn't going to leave a review as this place was awful, but I can't stand the overall high rating so only fair I share my view.

Positives: location is reasonable. The balcony upstairs is nice. That's it.

Negatives: Extremely expensive for what it was. Paid 140eur/night for a double room. Completely unjustifiable price for the reasons below. Our room had one window opening into the smoking area of the building. The air coming in was putrid, thick was cigarette smoke and weed. Shutting the windows resulted in it being far too hot to sleep. Disgusting. This one factor almost ruined our whole trip as it made any time in the room unbearable. Poor cleanliness. The bathrooms were not clean most of the time. Also very run down and in need of replacing showers. Also a fight for the toilets and showers every day which delayed getting out into the city. Unhelpful staff. I appreciate that we asked our questions in English, but the few times we asked for bar/restaurant recommendations or areas of the city to visit, we were essentially told 'I'm not sure'. Never had this at a hostel before - normally full of great suggestions. Minor point but a bit weird. No natural light. Dark and dingy. Quite unpleasant.

Overall hotel prices with shoddy hostel standards. I wouldn't have minded nearly as much if paying a fair price but this was ridiculous. Feel utterly ripped off and deeply regret staying here. The smoke and weed constantly coming into our room just shouldn't be allowed. Management need to address this but they won't, because...

This hostel is very good value for money and has many positives. The staff were very friendly and the theme nights were a wonderful touch. We enjoyed pizza and tapas evenings. The shared facilities were clean and the rainforest shower was lovely, really warm water and high-pressure. It was great to have breakfast to help ourselves to, and the balcony was so beautiful. You could hear the birds singing in the morning and the traffic sounds weren't too loud. The room was fine, although a bit too warm at night. The heating really didn't need to be up so high! The location is really central and most places were easy to get to on foot.

It wasn't clear who were staff, who were guests and who were friends of staff. There were lots of people milling around the reception area quite a bit, including late at night one night of our 3 night stay. Our room was close to the shared facilities so we were able to hear voices in the middle of the night, sometimes in the reception area and others in the communal kitchen. Dishes started being stacked and bustle started really early, 5.45 in the morning. Because noise doesn't stop until 11pm in the evening, the early noises meant we didn't get great sleep. Whoever was in the kitchen was definitely making efforts to minimalise noise, but it was enough to disturb us.

So, in summary, a cute and friendly hostel that is good overall value. Just ask for a room away from the communal facilities. Also, a staff T-shirt would be so good to help guests work...