Smart Hyde Park Inn

The location is good

Too many people, very confusing building and not comfortable at all

Friendly service, very good location, close to Hyde Park and a supermarket.

Incompatibility of information on available beds in the room. The information on the computer was different from the number of beds used. Very stuffy in the rooms, lack of adequate ventilation.

The best things in this property are its location (just next to South Kensington garden) and price, both are unbeatable. Beds are arranged to some sort of capsules separated by curtains, what, unlike in other hostels, provide relatively good privacy. I have not seen this in any other hostel and I love it! Hostel provides a lot of additional services (luggage store, ironing, laundry, kitchen), what can be very useful. Everything is straightforward and the staff is very nice. My experineces with hostels in London are usually worse than anywhere else. So, this hostel is not so good compared to what I have experienced in other cities, but for London it's by far the best.

It is a little bit too visible that the hostel tries to make as much money as possible (probably to keep the price for accommodation low). For the price stated here you really get only the bed, for all additional services, including locker in your room, you must pay extra fees. They are small, so the total price still remains unbeatable, just it's good to know it in advance. The bathroom which belongs to each room is extremely small, after some training you learn how to fit there, but this is the most uncomfortable thing at the property. Beds are ordered in three rows, the upper one is really very high, so if you don't like climbing up tall ladders, ask at the reception to put you to some room with free middle or lower bed. If the staff reads this, it would be nice to add some sort of shelves for luggages to the room. Even when it's allowed to have just one backpack and one large suitcase in the room, the space between beds is empty, so people are just throwing their stuff to one big pile and they don't have how to organize it better. The kitchen, dining room and TV room were always very noisy, so after first check I did not use them.