Walk On The Favela Hostel

First of all, the hostel has a beautiful view with a nice terrasse. The girls from Chile working in the hostel in particular were extremely nice and helpful. Even though it is located in a favela, I always felt quite safe there. The downside is the steep stairs that you have to walk up to get there and it was difficult to get Ubers to pick you up in front of the stairs; you usually had to walk down to Siqueira Campos metro station. Hostel wasn’t too far from the metro station, Siqueira Campos and Copacobana beach, which was a plus.

The first view days, the hostel was well maintained but during the carnival and afterwards, it was obvious that staff didn’t clean the hostel properly. To say it directly, the hygiene in the bathrooms, rooms and kitchen was really disgusting. Although you’d see staff come in there everyday to clean, they didn’t do a proper job. The cat there pooped on the floor which was there for 2 days... The same dirt that had accumulated from different people in the corner of the bathroom was there for up to a week. The lights in the bathroom go out after 30 seconds, and you have to constantly move and wave your arms to get it back on. I understand that they try to save money, but this is a bit extreme. We tried to explain the issue with the hygiene to the manager Ray and kindly asked for a refund for the last two nights in order to move to a different hotel, because one of us had been sick and the poor hygiene didn’t help on this problem. He started getting very defensive and offensive and said some very, very nasty and personal things to me and my friend. We found him extremely disrespectful, rude and unprofessional, because even if a refund is not possible, this is not how you should treat your guests. Especially since we calmly tried to explain to him that hygiene is a basic thing in a hostel and we simply ASKED if it’s possible to get the refund in order to move somewhere more clean. He claimed he can’t lose money because of a ”personal problem“, but considering we had stayed there for 17 nights, paid for drinks, towels and other stuff at the hostel during that time, I believe he’s already made a good amount of money from both us and all the other guests at the carnival. We spoke to several other guests in the hostel, who decided to leave the next day or even the same day because they had a similar issue with the hygiene. The manager said it was due to them being afraid of living in the Favela, but having personally spoken to many, it was because it was disgusting.