Albany Hostel

i stayed at the hostel and it was -- let me think -- disgusting. Of course the bed was clean. The shower had some Mushroom but it was the cheapest one i found at the i-net with bathroom and refrigerator. The money you pay it's worth.

My girlfriend and I visited the hostel last winter. Our experience was very bad. The host was not very nice. He did not care about his guests, or maybe he just didn't understand. The room was creepy and smelled funny, and there was a mousetrap in the room. The bath was nice though. As we got home we found out, that there had been lice in the room. My girlfriend got some strange looking red bite-marks on her legs and back and as we consulted a doctor back in Denmark. He told us that it was a kind of lice that lived on the walls in poorly cleaned rooms and drank the blood of humans. Don't go there. You'll regret it!

This hostel is okay. It's clean, safe, with a very nice bathroom in the room. It's worth the money. If the receptionist/boss were nicer, it would be much, much better.

When I stayed at this hostel the lift was broken, so my boyfriend and I had to drag our heavy luggage up many flights of stairs with no help at all! I was here in December 2003 for two nights.

I was there last January and was told that the lift was broken and that my room was on the fourth floor. Oddly, they told me the identical story the year before as if it were scripted. Apparently there is no intention of fixing the lift and the only available rooms always appear to be on the fourth floor. If all 97 rooms are constantly filled then they surely can afford to make all the much-needed repairs. If they bothered, this place would be ideal for central London. But as it is now, I would only recommend it for the heartiest of travelers.

I was there last year. Everyone was nice, and the rooms were okay. I loved it!

Not a bad place! I stayed here a month ago, and now I am back, using their internet on the last night of my month-long journey. It has a really convenient location with decent rooms. It's a hostel, not a hotel, and for a hostel, it is good. There is a fridge in the room, a good bathroom shared with only four others, and cozy beds. It's not the cleanest place, but REALLY not bad, considering my friend and I are quite picky. We would have booked again for tonight if they weren't full. It's also better than most london hostels, from what I have read.

I visited it last year, and it was great!!! I'll be there this year too!

The booking process with Visa worked perfectly. I paid the rest in cash at the day of arrival. The elevator was out of order, the carpet on the stairs was partly broken, but in the end, I booked a hostel and not a hotel! The private suite was clean, there was a fridge, a bed and a small but nice bathroom. It was on the fourth floor, but there wasn't even one insect/animal in the room. It was really OK. The location is very good, just like 200 meters from Earls Court Station and from where you can easily reach anything. There is Internet available and easily accessible. It was a good place to sleep and that is what I expect of a hostel, a solid place, no luxury. I would go there again.

I STRONGLY DON'T RECOMMEND IT!!! I just spent a week there and I am totally not satisfied. The location is quite good, and it is true that it's close to the tube station, but it is not a good place. A friend of mine recommended me to go there because he went there a couple of years ago, and it was a quite good budget place. But I guess the management changed a year and a half ago. There's totally no maintenance, and the place looks really creepy. Only the hall looks quite decent, but as soon as you go up or downstairs, everything's different. The carpets are very old, smelly, visibly dusty and even ragged, especially on the stair steps. The elevator was out of order, so not only I had to drag my heavy bags, but I bet there would be no access to disabled people at all. And no need to say that it is not true that the rooms are cleaned on a daily basis. On the first night I was given a creepy room, very dusty, with dirty bed sheets, broken window (could not close it), and no fridge as I paid for. (There were phones inside the rooms, for outgoing calls only, but they were not working, as the main phone of the hotel was not working as well. In fact for three days in a row before my departure I had been trying to give them a call but no one ever answered the phone, and then I learnt why.) I asked for more clean sheets, and the incompetent receptionist led me to the store room, and told me to pick the ones that "looked" clean to me. And some weren't, with visible stains on them. And of course they were not ironed, but not even clean. I asked for another room, and he told me there were no other rooms available. All he could do was get the fridge the next day from another room. I slept with my clothes and coat on, not to have any contact with the filthy bed linen, and did not unpack my bags, as I wanted to run away and ask for a refund. In the morning, there was a quite nicer lady at the desk, who told me that the guy should have given me another room, even if it was a double one. We agreed that I could decide to stay if I had a clean room. She told me there were two, on the fourth floor, the highest. I picked one. The following day - it had been raining - in the evening when I got back to my room I realised that it was raining inside as well, and specifically on the bedside table, where there were all the switches for the room lights, so I was worried a short circuit could occur. All they did was give me a cloth, and promise they would have repaired the roof in the morning. Last but not least, one night I could not sleep because there were noises in my room, in particular a plastic bag seemed to be touched or moved my something, and I found out that it was some rat trying to pull a biscuit out of it (which meant the rat was under the bed!!!). That was the end of my "happy" budget holiday. The next morning, the same lady at the desk told me that she thought the mice might come from another room that probably has never been cleaned for two months, and in which a very messy and dirty guy who used to work there had been living. The only reason why I did not check-out as soon as possible is because they told me that what I paid through credit card (£44, the 35% of the weekly rate) did not count for them as it all goes to the site, and so they had to charge me 2 nights from the £80 I paid there in cash. Which meant I would have lost £60 with no reason. I really hope they're going to do something about it.

I stayed at this hostel two years ago and I still remember it with pleasure. I met great people there!