Pleasant morning staff (as opposed to the gruff afternoon one) will smile, check you out, hold your bags and then try to clean the public areas, but really this property is well past it and should be completely removed from this booking site. It is a rundown hostel that is simply not worthy of a listing here and does not give foreign tourists a very positive view of NZ accommodation standards.
Visible areas of my room appeared ok at a cursory glance but, after examining the walls and carpet and moving the bed, I immediately regretted staying here - there is filth everywhere. Old facilities are perfectly acceptable, but poor maintenance and unhygienic floors, dirty fittings & fixtures are not. Bathrooms are functional but the owners are clearly not even interested in spending a few dollars to fix basic things like door locks, preferring instead to stick handwritten signs up telling you how to engineer your own way out of a cubicle. Lino floors were sticky, guest lounges looked unkempt, bedroom curtains hung adrift from their rails.
To top it off, the noise until 2am (on a Tuesday night even) from the partying staff at the Market St Bar downstairs is totally unacceptable. It means an entire wing of the hotel is sleepless, banging around in rooms and hallways, and wasting many hours lying in wait in their beds contemplating what horrible germs and bugs might at that moment be descending upon them. Thoroughly unpleasant and a somewhat sour experience to have booked this sort
