Name: Central Hostel
Address: 26 Princes Square London W2 4NJ,Princes Square, London, London, London, W2 4NJ, United Kingdom
Rating: 4

24-hour reception

Smoke-free property

General

Luggage storage

Safe-deposit box

Services and amenities

Common kitchen

Meals

Wi-Fi

Internet

Location

At the hostel

Bayswater

Queensway

Notting Hill Gate

The Reel Poster Gallery

Elfin Oak

Notting Hill Coronet

Tabernacle

Threesixty Theatre

St George's Campden Hill

Paddington Central

Kensington Church Street

Paddington Railway Station

Puppet Theatre Barge

Italian Gardens

Hyde Park

Victoria and Albert Museum

Madame Tussauds

Loftus Road Stadium

Buckingham Palace

The British Museum

National Gallery

Big Ben

London Eye

The Shard

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

London City Airport

London Heathrow Airport

London Gatwick Airport

London Luton Airport

Farnborough Airport

Blackbushe Airport

Rochester Airport

Stansted Airport

Central Hostel

London

I tried to check my cousin in and they refused her, based on her not having ID. I made the booking and provided my passport, but they wouldn't accept that. I finally accepted they wouldn't be reasonable that I wouldn't be able to book her in and asked for my money back as they couldn't provide the service that I had paid for, and they refused! Bad enough that my cousin had nowhere to stay and just wanted somewhere to sleep for the night and have a shower, as she had recently been made homeless, but then to turn her away and refuse to refund me is disgusting. The man on the front desk -I have never experienced such a rude and heartless person in my life. Thieves. Just looking through the reviews as well, my cousin had a lucky escape as the hostel sounds disgusting. Please pay a bit more for a better accommodation and customer service and AVOID this place at all costs.

Appalling customer service and stole my money!

Whole entire hostel is filthy and male staff as rude I have never seen either they are always drunk or it’s they way of behaviour thinking this management is kind off they home,
Toilets are so dirty not even a public toilet in street will be this dirty and shocked!

Most disgusting place I ever seen!

Staff at reception did their jobs but did not interact with guests. No eye contact or conversation, just the bare minimum to book you in. Had beds in a 6 bed room. From the amount of luggage of one of the guests I think they were pretty much living there. There was a man cleaning when we were there and he was putting in a valiant effort but the place is so run down and in need of maintenance, no amount of cleaning would help. Toilets were blocked. Bathrooms and showers unisex. The bathroom we were allocated had three showers but the cubicles were only big enough to stand in, not get dressed in, so you had to get changed in the common area. Kitchen was also cleaned but was so run down that no amount of cleaning would help. Kitchen tiny. Eating area was a reasonable size. Location is the best thing going for this hoste.

There are better options nearby

Honestly, me and my friends didn't do our research properly, before booking this hostel. We just cared about the location and indeed that's the only positive thing related to this place. As soon as you got inside, you could feel a terrible smell. The dust was everywhere and since I'm allergic to dust, you can only imagine how my staying was. The room was a mixed one (no problem about that), but full of 40ish years old people. No little stairs for the bunk bed and no protection, that's why I was forced to sleep with my friend. You could feel that the blankets have already been used previously.

1 star, but just for the location

Dreadful.
My girlfriend and I stayed for a couple of nights, and from the very first moment there was problems all around.
We had a delayed flight from Barcelona and managed to get to the Hostel in the evening; once there, the receptionist, an italian girl with glasses (who, like every other staff member in the accomodation, doesn´t even greet the guests and even avoid visual contact...) told us we couldn´t pay with credit card ´cause their machine was broken (since who knows when), and we ought to withdraw cash form an ATM (which, without having a bank account in England, means paying comission). Instead of giving solutions ( I´ve worked in Hotels and Hostels for a while, and even thought about asking for the 24h support contact number these card machines have in order to fix the situation...She phoned her "manager" instead, literally saying: "there´s two people here that don´t want to pay with cash". No one told us about this situation before getting to the Hostel, otherwise we´d have withdrawn the cash before flying to London...The whole situation made us both feel stranded as the receptionist didn´t even care.

They still made us pay the deposit for the room key even after all this situation, once we payed the reservation with cash (it would have been a detail from that receptionist part to waive the key deposit for once, after rippinf us off and out of our money)

The rooms look grimmy, dirty, messy...there´s no lockers, no hairdriers to be seen, and in case you need a towel, you have to BUY one for 6 Pounds...

Next days, none of the members of the reception said "hello", "good morning"...those polite ways to make the guests feel a little bit safe and welcome in any accomodation.

It is obvious there´s quite a lot of problems in the Hostels facilities, but the worst of all is the attitude of the staff.

Will never recommend or stay in this lair again...what a nightmare.

The Hostel´s falling apart, but staff couldn´t care less

During my first days of stay everything went well as my first experience in the hostel, I met wonderful and polite people. Until a friend of mine was banned from the hostel (unjustly accused of smoking marijuana near the hostel, and having left footprints on the wall) and 2 days later with the intention of prolonging my stay by another week , I was banned. Reason? "because I'm that boy's friend". This makes no sense, here we are talking about discrimination and racism by staff. I did not call the POLICE out of respect for the educated people who live there.
my advice is
AVOID IF YOU CAN.

You can find a better place

The building is not in the best condition (although during my stay I met continuously with staff who were making arrangements all the time). There are many stairs (consider it not a light trip because it cost me horribly to load my luggage up to the second floor and I can't imagine what it will be like to go to the last one).The most critical thing is that, having understood what the page said room with ba en suite actually meant was that there was a ghost (without working on the door) in the room, which made it impractical to be more or less quiet (but considering that it was a mixed room), taking into account the rest of the bathroom in the hallway (unfortunately it was in the hallway, but not all of our staff were very reserved in the middle of the bathroom).

Not as good as I expected.

Other staff was nice but the two ladies in the reception were so rude! We came in with my friend and they didn't even say that the pin-machine wasn't working, I just happened to read a note from the wall saying it doesn't work. Well then we asked where is the nearest atm and the woman replied "I don't know." It would be nice to know where the f*** is the nearest one if your card machine isn't working?? Then we had to carry our stuff around to find an atm and come back. The check-in took a looong time. So yes, the reception staff ladies were super rude.

Not the worst hostel where I've been but definitely not the best. Close to everything so doesn't really matter, but I would never hang out in the hostel.

Nice beds, rude staff ladies

Need a sanitary check from specialist. I’m pretty sure that this hotel is not really clean.
We where in a room where a man is actually located living in so those man feel like home and make noise at 1am. 
Don’t go there !! Don’t go there !!

Want to go home

To whom it may concern, 

The manager (think his name was Mark but can't remember 100%, sorry, he was French and on night shift duty last week), along with his staff including Sufyan (from Morocco I believe? Think I got his name right) and anyone else who was on duty were all nice to me. 

I really appreciated people's fist bumps and the honest night time conversation with the manager and one of the hostel visitors in the common room a lot - one can have honest conversations with him on taboo topics which others could find awkward, weird and strange let's say.

You do get what you pay for so to speak. If you're looking for somewhere fancy, luxurious and upmarket place that's ideal to take the kids or a special lady to then this is not the place but if you're a twenty something boy who's just looking for an affordable place in a central location for the short term that does the job so to speak then Central Hostel is a place I can vouch for. 

If you end up feeling confused on how to change the shower water temperature like I was initially then you can just ask someone and they should explain like the housekeeping man explained to me.

Thank you for your time,

Raza =)

Central Hostel

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