London Gate Backpackers Hotel

Disgustingly dirty, no toilet was usable for me, kitchen was full of bird shit, bathroom full of mold and dirt, no clean place or hanger to put your stuff. No privacy at all in the dorm, loud weird people and all the only positive thing I have to say is that laundry is for free

Not good

I stayed here two nights as a solo female traveller and I felt really uncomfortable with the behaviour of the male guests (which was the majority) they were drinking and making animal sounds in the yard all evening, "training" shirtless and grunting and yelling, fighting with each other and taking up all the space so you couldn't even have a conversation. I never had a sleepless night like this since they were also talking super loundly in the dorm all night, completely disregarding the fact that there were other guests and that it's the middle of the night. I felt very uncomfortable and staff didn't seem to bother much with that behaviour and the constant public weed smoking of the same guys, seems like they own the place. The other bad thing is that there is literally no equipment in the kitchen so I couldn't even cook my own meals. Never again

I booked and paid for a 4-person room a week in advance. When I arrived to the accomodation to check-in, the girl at reception said the room is unavailable because they have overbooked the room. She said the only other room available was a 10-bed mixed dorm. I told her that this is not a comparable room and that I’m going to check online to see what is available elsewhere before doing anything with my booking. Momentarily after, she told me someone has now taken the last room and so she has cancelled my booking! All other hostels in the city were fully booked out due to it being a busy Halloween night, meaning I literally had nowhere else to go other than a *** hotel. The girl did not care in the slightest and did not try in the smallest capacity to help with any solution despite this being their fault. Anytime I asked her a basic question she ignored me and played on her phone. I asked her multiple times to speak to her manager to which she replied there isn’t one. Another worker arrived later on advising he is a “quasi-manager”. I explained the situation to him to which he advised he can’t help because he wasn’t there so doesn’t know the situation, despite both his colleague and I giving him our accounts of the situation. While he made more effort than the girl, he was a dead-end with no means to make any managerial decisions or offer up any solutions. He contacted his boss (the “owner”) via txt message who was even less inclined to help and would only say that he would email me tomorrow despite me having nowhere to sleep tonight. (He did not contact me the next day or anytime after that in any form.) In the hours that I was stuck at reception getting no help or no general human empathy from the staff, 3 other separate guests at the accomodation came to reception to complain that people had taken their beds, and now one of them was missing a bag. At all levels of this hostel and its operations was complete incompetence, a disregard of consumer law obligations, a lack of accountability and lack of basic human empathy. Furthermore, the level of cleanliness of the place looked very poor, and, despite the accomodation being classed as “non-smoking”, the whole place has a thick stench of weed. The cheap price is not worth the risk of being stranded without a room or having your personal safety and comfort compromised. Spend a little more and stay somewhere else to have a bed that’s guaranteed and staff that actually have competence and care about their job and you as a customer and person.