Be very careful with this hostel. Although the location is good and it looks modern and fresh for a good price, it's all a show for the photos. So many things went wrong during my stay and it was just grimy and felt unsafe. I don't think I saw any cleaning done while I was there.
To begin with, I booked a female dorm - more expensive than a mixed dorm. When I arrived, I was taken to my room and settled in. An hour or so later, a man arrived and I assumed he was a worker getting beds ready. However, it turns out he was a guest and they had put me in a mixed dorm. He then proceeded to act very inappropriately with me, so I went down to reception to see what was going on.
I was told that they put me in a mixed dorm because there was no availability in the female-only dorm the following night and they thought I would prefer to stay in one room rather than keep moving. They never communicated this with me, nor asked what I would have preferred. I told them what happened with the guy and that I had paid for a female dorm, so I expected to be accommodated for what I reserved. It took hours and hours trying to resolve things, and eventually I moved to the female dorm for the night but I was completely exhausted and my evening was ruined.
The next morning also wasted about 3 hours of my holiday time trying to sort out where I would sleep on this night. Even though they had multiple private rooms available, their solution was to put a dirty, stained additional bed in the 6-bed dorm that they expected me to sleep in. The other ladies rightfully complained about this, as we had all paid for a 6 bed dorm and expected to be compensated if we now have to share a bathroom and kitchen with an extra person. They also refused to show me any health and safety documents to confirm risk assessments had taken place (e.g. if there was a fire) with an extra bed squashed in the room. It also meant that one person would be without a locker as there are only 6 lockers in the room.
I did not feel comfortable with this because one of my roommates told me she had things stolen from her bag while under the watch of the staff. The same girl also had the same problem as me - being put in a mixed dorm when she paid for a female one. For her, she woke up to a man staring at her while she was sleeping. Other ladies told me that staff had bagged up all their stuff and moved them into a different room without asking or warning them.
Over the week that I stayed, so many women told me they experienced the same problem - booking a female-only dorm only to end up in a mixed one. They said so much of their time had been wasted and staff repeatedly lied about what was going on.
Another girl told me that they tried to put her in a DOUBLE BED with a STRANGER (!!!???) as a way to resolve the over-booking situation. When both ladies refused this suggestion, they tried the 7-beds in a 6-bed dorm strategy once more (again, all while they had single rooms available!) After more push-back from all involved, they agreed to reassign one of the mixed to a female dorm, which involved kicking the guys out of the room. They were then promised that this room would be reserved for only women from now on. What happened the following morning? They tried to move a man in.
Instead of providing good customer service and admitting their mistakes, they blamed the website. When pushed about this, they just kept saying 'we have emailed the website', but in my opinion if this keeps happening they needed to withdraw from the website completely and take the loss instead of inconveniencing - or even endangering! - guests. They caused so much stress and cost so much time for almost all guests - even the guys because I'm pretty sure a lot of guys had to be relocated to accommodate the need for our female-only spaces.
It was just so genuinely shocking how bad the customer service policy is. The staff themselves were mostly pleasant, just a little hopeless. The only complaint I have is about the general manager, Faith. Originally I thought she was the most helpful as she was the one actioning things and trying to resolve the situation, but then I found out that she was moaning about guests to other guests!!
Ultimately, it is clear to me that Mojo only cares about profit and does not care about the health, safety, happiness, or security of their guests and it is not worth it. It would have cost them nothing to put one of us in an empty private room - only the changing of bed sheets. But they are so stingy they would rather stress out all their guests and staff, and waste a hours and hours of time. It's just such a poor management strategy.
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