HostelBookers Reviews 8,977

These lot are proper unhelpful, wont even reply to my messages!

Quite dodgy company/customer service. We booked a nice hotel with good reviews in Istanbul, Turkey included an insurance in case we want to cancel last minute. On the day of the booking, we arrived to a filthy hotel, with dirty towels, broken furniture, cracks in wall and holes in the ceiling. When contacted the customer service they said to stay 1 day to make the review and the problem will be solved the next day. The next day after quite a bad breakfast (eggs not cooked and with poo in the shell, old ham, dirty dishes), we called again to be told nothing can be done as we already started the lodging. We had to book another rooms via another website. Quite bad experience and no help received from this company.

Made booking for a hostel Nakel Yenu in El Calafate in Patagonia. Place got great reviews but actual stay was horrible.

Terrible and fake website. You can see on the first page:,, no service fee”, no booking fees/charge ; both lies. I have checked my bank account and after my reservation there is only one charge - from hostelworld ( hostelworld, Hostelsdotcom and hostelbookers are
owned by the same company.

My mum died 4 days before I was to travel to Amsterdam. I booked a room through Hostelbookers at The Quentin England Hotel, Amsterdam. I was to arrive on Monday 24 April for 2 nights. I paid the booking fee of €23 which I knew I wouldn't get back if I cancelled but tried to cancel my reservation 3 days before I was to arrive in Amsterdam and all I got was problems. I cancelled within the 48 hour limit but neither the hotel or Hostelbookers would accept the 48 hour limit and said that this particular hotel needed 72 hours. I asked Hostelbookers to send me a link to the page where it stated that the limit was 72 hours and I got no reply. Hostel bookers then took almost €70 off the credit card number which I gave them when I booked even though I refused. This is theft and the company Hostelbookers is a scam site. Don't trust them and please spread the word. I have reported the company to VISA and the police.

Very poor standards. I booked into a property in Dubrovnik and was advised by Hostelbookers that as my credit card expired before the date of travel, I needed to contact the hostel DIRECT as soon as my new credit arrived. I did exactly as instructed but found that the hostel had cancelled almost immediately that I had booked, and had then sent me notification via an extremely unprofessional e-mail with no heading nor booking reference. Unsurprisingly, this went straight into my spam folder.
Now this is NOT Hostelbookers fault but it certainly isn't mine and, having thought that everything was organised,through no fault of my own, I find myself without accommodation and that the many other cheaper options are no longer available.
Why, oh why, did HostelBookers not simply say from the outset that you can't book accommodation if the credit card is due to expire?Customer services are brusque and impolite, stating that the case is now closed and that they have refunded the deposit that they have held onto since last November. They imply that the fault is mine as the e-mail went into spam, but this is not a problem that I usually encounter with the many holidays that I book.
Will be looking to use other regular suppliers in the future.....

I had a mixup with a booking, I asked for it to be canceled, and no one responded to me for a few days. I realized I wouldn't get my deposit back so I asked to rescind my cancelation, I figured that since no one got back to me that meant it wasn't canceled yet. However that is when the hotel and hostelbookers got involved, basically they then started trying to cancel the order, and I asked who do I talk to to stop that and both said the other was in charge of the order. it ended up getting canceled, fine... miscommunication. However, it still shows up on my hostelbookers account as being booked, so I sent them an email to get rid of it. I want to make sure it's gone. I've sent many emails to confirm, and its been a few weeks and they wont get rid of it so I don't know if im going to get charged for the whole booking despite it being canceled. No emails, no replys, and I keep contacting them. I wouldn't trust them, especially going to another country.

I made a booking in error and wanted to cancel almost immediately (within hours). I would have hoped for a more forgiving policy on this, for example giving you 24 hours grace. However, because I had not paid the (quite expensive) payment protection, I have to let them keep their 20% booking fee. 

Given that, you can imagine I have been a bit annoyed by the complete hands off attitude of the hostelbookers.com customer service. I had been unable to contact the hostel, despite numerous attempts over two weeks. The contact details on the hostelbookers website are inaccurate (phone number invalid) and I couldn't get any response even from details taken directly from the hostel's own website. (It later transpired that the hostel was closed that month.) What's Hostelbookers response to this? It is my responsibility to contact them. My only reason for going through a trusted broker rather than booking directly with the hostel is so that I can actually trust the customer service. In this instance, my 20% fee just seems to be being spent on sending deflectionary emails. 

While I hear that hostelbookers.com policy is that I need to contact the hostel directly and therefore this lack of response is fault of the hostel rather than them, I would disagree. I would argue that my minimum expectation as a customer is that they would help me when there is a problem. I would also expect them to verify contact details with the hostel before publishing on their website rather than saying it is the hostels responsibility. What am I paying my 20% fee to them for if they do not even do these things?

(please note, if I seem to be labouring the point about why I feel HostelBookers is in the wrong rather than just the hostel, it is because hostelbookers.com has already attempted to remove this review once. I therefore strongly believe that this review remains valid)

Please DO NOT BOOK with HostelBookers. They are fine if you don't want to change or cancel, but the minute you need to do one of these, all hell breaks loose! I changed my itinerary so needed to cancel one of my hostels, but found this was impossible to do through HostelBookers - you are told to contact the hostel directly. So I did this (it was in Japan), and the hostel kindly cancelled the booking. All done, I thought. But then I looked at my account on HostelBookers, and saw the booking was still there! And two months later, it still is!! Even worse, it now says that I have been to the hostel (I didn't) and that I have paid 5,262.40 Japanese yen to the hostel!! (I hope I haven't, as I didn't go there - but this is where it gets worrying!). Have HostelBookers taken my money? Has the hostel taken my money? I'm not sure, as the booking is still on my account, and I haven't received all the credit card bills for the holiday yet. I have contacted HostelBookers at least 4 times already and asked them to take this rogue booking off my account, but they say it is impossible. Then I tried to close my account, but this is also impossible. I am so glad that I booked all my other hostels for this trip with other companies, not HostelBookers. If you use them, expect a lot of stress and worry if you need to change your plans. I will certainly never book with them again.

Booked a hotel, showed up and it was cancelled, no cancellation, no correspondence, just cancelled.

Contacted hostelbookers customer service, loosest possible term, they were and are not only completely useless but sarcastic and rude as well.

I travel a lot and never encountered such a bollix of a company.

Booked a room for the Euro16 championships in Lyon well in advance through this company. Have just received a mail saying they are cancelling the booking and refunding the deposit. No reason given. No attempt to book alternative. Beware!

would not use again-unable to cancel reservation through hostelbookers.com, have to contact hostel in CHINA to cancel a reservation. Terrible predictament.

I've been using hostelbookers for over 3 years and it's the best site going. You can book the hostel right for you in under 5 minutes, it's easy and straight forward to use. Gives all information you need about each hostel, lots of reviews plus no extra fees.

They used to be a good alternative to the big corporation behind Hostelworld that is taking over all the hostel booking websites (including hostels.com). But then Hostelbookers too got bought by Hostelworld's corporate owners and they started raising the prices on their too. I would recommend avoiding the hostelworld/hostelbookings/hostels.com monopoly on hostels and use some of the better review sites that are out there.

These people are scam

i canceled my reservation as they indicated and they didn't return back my money , its a shame , they only said that they can't do anything though they are pretty sure that i made all correct steps.

normally this is defined as stealing

Their website does not allow me to leave reviews! I simply cannot submit my reviews and the customer service people don't do anything about it. They bring some reasons which are incorrect. It has been a week I cannot leave reviews for 4 places I have been to and their customer service has not done a thing about it.

They need to make it clearer that the 'deposit' they take is actually a booking fee that is NOT refundable. Don't book through this website - as most of their properties are available for the same or cheaper price through other websites - and if you change your reservation you will get your money back!
Won't be using them again

I had no problems with the booking or anything else. I am satisfied with Hostel Bookers.

Pamela