Barkston Rooms Earl's Court

Location.

Awfully smelling room with a rude staff that barely spoke English and treating you like trash. They charge you for everything, from a towel to storing your luggage - I wouldn't be surprised if they would want to charge you for saying hello or goodbye!

The location is pretty good, next to the underground station Earl’s Court. Everything was pretty clean also.

First, there is no WiFi in the rooms, and there also isn’t any power outlets to charge your phone. So I had to go sit in McDonald’s for 2 hours every day to charge my phone and power bank and use WiFi. Very annoying. There is WiFi in the lobby but the staff won’t let you leave your phone to charge overnight. Second, the mattresses are super uncomfortable. I think they found them on the street. There is about 1cm of padding on top of bare springs. Also the building is in poor condition and feels at points like it will fall apart. Third, a story: When I returned to the hostel my second night, a man outside asked to use my phone to search for hostels because this one (Barkston Rooms) was full. So I helped him find another nearby to check. BUT when I woke up this morning, there were 4 empty unused beds in my room! So the staff had clearly just denied this man a room (he had a foreign accent but was very amiable)!! When so many people have to sleep on the streets in London that is just unacceptable. Anyways the place is fine if you can get in. Better than the streets at least.

The pictures do not show the real quality of the room. Walls were pealing and dirty, floors were not clean, the bathroom facilities were cramped and gross, beds were horribly quality with springs poking you, and the staff was not service oriented or very friendly. Very disappointed in this location. After talking with some people in London we came to find out that our experience is not normal with hostels, most of the time they are better kept. This was pretty bad. Don’t trust the pictures you see in their ads, they aren’t what you will get.