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Hostels Guide > Australia & Oceania > Australia > Northern Territory > Alice Springs Hostels > Melanka Backpackers Resort

Melanka Backpackers Resort

Alice Springs

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Hostels in Alice Springs

Address	94 Todd Street, Alice Springs Northern Territory, Australia Map
Price	$20 Dorm bed, $55 Twin/Double/Single

Location/Contact

Details

This is a VIP hostel. Show your VIP Backpackers membership card for a discount at check-in.

Online booking is not offered for this hostel, contact them for availability and reservations (any contact info we have is listed above).

Their Description

Features

Free Breakfast
Kitchen

The Hostelz.com Review

Melanka Backpackers Resort is really good! In the middle of the outback city of Alice Springs, Melanka is the perfect place to stay if you wanna go on a Ayers Rock tour. You can leave your luggage in their storage room for free. The disadvantage is that nobody controls if people take more than their own luggage -- if you want to know your backpack is safe, put it in a locker somewhere in the city because they don´t have lockers at Melanka.

The Location

Melanka is situated in the centre of Alice Springs and is about a two minutes walk to the shops. An internet cafe is right next to the hostel. There is no carpark. If you arrive in Alice Springs by Greyhound bus, it stops right in front of the hostel since the Greyhound office is across the road.

Rooms and Bathrooms

The dorms are excellent! Each room has a bathroom, TV, fridge, and working aircon. In addition to that there are shared bathrooms on each level. The beds are comfy and the rooms are very well equipped and nicely arranged. It´s quiet in the nighttime and you can feel safe.

Common Spaces

Melanka has a large outdoor kitchen, which is not very well equipped and a bit dirty. In addition to that, some pieces of the equipment don´t work. The pool area is next to the kitchen and is really nice. There´s a lot of space for sunbathing and sitting next to the pool to cool down. Next to the reception is a common area with a TV and a pool table. The Melanka bar is located in a separate building next to the hostel. It´s a very good place for going out and meeting new people. In addition to that, they sell good and cheap food.

Summary

All in all, we recommend Melanka because of its really good dorms and bathrooms and its perfect location in Alice Springs. It´s a great place to be, especially at the Melanka bar!

— Exclusive Hostelz.com Review
November 2008

Ratings & Comments

2.2 Average from 14 Ratings

This is an open forum, and unlike other hostel guide websites we don't censor out the negative comments.
We can't validate the legitimacy of comments posted on this site—so take what you read here with a grain of salt.

Comment by Kailin

February 2007

Their rooms are very small and not very clean. They have no lift. They only have one toilet and three showers for ladies who stay in the same floor. The shower room can't hang your clothes and wash up stuff.

Comment by welsh lad

November 2006

sh*t. stayed there for one night and was the worst night of my life! Some druggies came into me and my mates room and kept us there asking for drugs and threatening to kill us. how these people were allowed in the backpackers i dont know. later i found out they had broken into other peoples rooms and stolen things like passports and flight tickets. after spending most the night in the police station giving a statement, we were offered a free night in the hostel for our troubles which we kindly told them to stick up their arses. this is no lie, i would recommend that no one stays at this hostel!

Comment by DRW

May 2006

No problems with this hostel at all. Didn't encounter any of the problems written on this page. Good location, right opposite Greyhound, 5 min walk to town, great party bar and clean rooms. I paid 20 bucks and got a 3-bed dorm.(Rather than 16 bucks and got a 10-bed that a certain other establishment gave me). All good as far as I'm concerned. Rooms were clean, as was linen, as were the showers and toilets.

Comment by English Backpacker

March 2006

I just left Alice Springs and stayed at Melanka's. I think this place was great, the staff were always entertaining us and keeping us informed of local events, the bar was awesome, cheap drinks, cheap food and lots of it, the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. The place looks freshly painted and the rooms and bathrooms were spotless. I would definitely recommend this place to others.

Comment by 3 girls

November 2005

Too big. The pub is great though, and after the tour to Uluru we had the best party with our group there!!

Comment by Claire

June 2005

Nasty. The rooms feel like cells, it's noisy, there are not enough toilets, and the kitchen was getting renovated at the time I was here so we had to cook on camping stoves outside. The pool is not particularly clean. It's big, unfriendly and dirty.

Comment by Sam

May 2005

Cheapish rooms but dark and grotty. The bar was a good laugh and a general meeting point for backpackers in the area which was the only plus side to an otherwise dirty place.

Comment by Lucie Waterman

January 2005

This is the most unhygienic, dated, rank hostel I've ever stayed in! The beds are like cots and the windows have old manky [dirty] sheets slung over them for curtains. The pool is full of all sorts of crap. You can't even enter the kitchen because of the vile smell, and if you do dare to go in there it's filthy and the tea towels are brown and sticky. Also, if you want cooking equipment, even just a spoon, you have to pay a $5 deposit for 1 hour's use, and if you go over you get charged. The bathrooms are full of hair, they're dirty and you have one toilet per floor. There must be about 60 people on each floor. Staff are useless. Do not stay here!

Comment by Susie

January 2005

I only stayed there for one night. I didn't find it too bad. There's not much to do in Alice, and we had just gotten back from safari so it was good to get a good feed and sleep! The bath and shower room was communal, though. I didn't like that, and there were only two working showers!

Comment by Anonymous

November 2004

This place had very small and dirty rooms! The reception was not very friendly or helpful. The 24-hour access works only if your pin code for the door works. However, that does not happen often so you are dependent on someone else opening the door. The hostel has a really nice pub and the place has the image of being THE place to stay in Alice. It was okay for one night.

Comment by E

August 2004

I stayed 3 nights, it felt like 3 weeks. The bathrooms were dirty, I slept with lots of Bed Bugs, the laundry didn't work, the rooms were small and dark, and the kitchen facilities were poor--you have to rent out all the utensils. The pub next door is very noisy; you don't have to be in it to know whats going on! The staff were friendly, though.

Comment by H

June 2004

There is no heating in the Winter so it was very, very cold when I stayed here. The bathrooms are pretty poor, too.

Comment by ste f

March 2004

Two words: Bed Bugs. I spoke to a lot of people who stayed here and the vast majority were the lucky recipients of multiple bites.

Comment by Anouck

December 2003

It's a big place, but with small rooms, too small if u ask me. Not much of an atmosphere. But the rooms are clean. Nice bar/pub where u can play drinking games with your ayers rock tour crew... not everybody's piece of pie...

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Hostels in Alice Springs

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