Cadiz Inn Backpackers — Hotel in Cádiz

The hostel itself is extremely clean, and the rooms very cosy.

This is definitely a "no frills" hostel as it describes itself. The kitchen is dark and dingy on the ground floor, and gives you the feeling that you wouldn't want to stay there longer than necessary. The hostel lacks decent common areas- which is a shame, as the key to making a hostel great, is to provide a platform for travellers to meet eachother. The rooftop has potential, but the way the seating is arrange is awkward and a bit difficult for people to talk to each other.

One element that was unacceptable was that hot water function in the shower wasn't working. The staff had not warned me about this, and I had at least a few cold showers, which was definitely not nice in winter. I raised this to staff, and they didn't seem very interested or proactive about it. On the last day, I ended up, at my own initiative, using a shower on another floor. It doesn't seem like the staff took any action regarding the hot water not working, and I have suggested that they warn guests of this in advanced.

Secondly, there is a vending machine at the entrance that doesn't work properly. I wanted to get a Kit-Kat bar, and tried three times, and the broken machine ended up taking my 3 EUR, and dumping the bars at within the glass of the machine. When I raised this with staff the next morning, and asked for a refund, they opened the machine and attempted to refuse to refund me, and offered me the Kit-Kat bars that had been dumped at the bottom of the machine. I thought this was really rude and frankly cheeky. When I explained to them that I shouldn't have to pay for the hostel's machine not working properly I was reluctantly given a refund.

Thirdly, on my first day, I was told that there was a walking tour at 10.30am, and 1pm. The next morning, I rushed my plans to arrive at the walking tour, only to find the 10.30am tour is in Spanish only. I wish the staff had warned me about this, as I would have been able to plan better and not loose half a day.

Generally, the reception seemed to have reduced winter hours, which seems reasonable, however given all the issues, and the aloof attitude the staff seemed to have when they were actually present, I just had the overall impression that the staff were not interested.

On top of this, there was no atmosphere at the hostel, no activities/suggestions, and just a general lack of care put into, just makes me wonder, why choose to run a hostel at all?

Cadiz is a beautiful city, rich with culture and traditions, it seems like there would be a market in Cadiz having a hub to welcome travellers to the city, like some of the other cities in Andalusia- this hostel has a lot of potential, but they need to work on some of the...

We stayed in a 6 bed dorm for 2 nights in September. The hostel decided to allow a bachelors party to not only take place in the hostel but in the kitchen. We came back to the hostel to find out there was a stripper and a group of rowdy guys in the kitchen having what was hopefully the time of their lives.

It was great to know that the hostel not only allowed this to happen but allowed it to happen in the kitchen where we prepared our food and had our meals. The real kicker was that when we almost forced our way into the kitchen we found out that the lady working the night reception was in on the whole thing. She was in there watching the show and, presumably, participating. I'm not a prude by any measure, but this is the communal kitchen for fs sake. Had we known about this in advance we might have booked elsewhere or at least packed a couple of cans of Lysol before check in.

Beyond the simple problems this presents by preventing your guests from using facilities they've paid for I don't care to get into the details about how there isn't enough disinfectant in the world to make up for this blunder. When we brought this up to the morning staff we were given an 'oh yeah, I heard about that'. If this is what happens that you find out about, can you imagine what goes on in this place on a day to day basis that you never hear about. I would recommend avoiding this place at all costs.

As for the rest of the experience, the room to our dorm would not close easily and was inevitably left open all day, every day we were there. The beds are made of memory foam that, after 5 minutes in them, flatten out and leave you laying directly on the wire mesh underneath. At this point in my life I can safely say that I've stayed at well over a hundred hostels and this one, while not the worst, is near the bottom of the list.

However, the location is excellent and right outside of the train station and within easy access to many sites, restaurants and a short walk to the beaches. Then again, so is everything...

There are thieves on the neighbourhood.

The staff is very pleasant and they help you in everything you want or need, but the hostel is not a very good one. The room were in the entrance floor and a little bit noisy. The first night a group of italians came at 5AM, took some beers from the vending machine and spoke at a very high level on the stairs. There is nobody from the staff in case you need something at night so, I had to tell them by myself to shut down the party. They kept the party on the main door outside, they kept disturbing. The second night was a totally different adventure, I woke up at 5AM with a hand stealing a bag from our room through the window, yelled at him and the thief escaped running. The very next morning, when I told them, they acted like surprised. When we went to the police, the officer told us this wasn't the first time. The thief already knew that window was easy to open (it's broken and does not close easily) and if you don't close the shutters it's easy to steal from windows.

Not recomendable, they are very nice but they suffer many problems and try...