Dakota Hostel and Hotel (San Francisco, USA)

Members of staff are nice enough. Friendly and helpful, they do their best to ensure that you are OK.

The hostel has authentic and attractively historic features. The communal lounge area is particularly welcoming and relaxing. The sister hostel, the Adelaide, is just across the street, so if things go wrong here, you can always nip across the road  and use their facilities.

It isn't the best one you'll ever taste, but breakfast is acceptable. It's all part of a picture which boils down to the essentials;  location, services and overall value for money. In these combined respects, you could pay a lot more ... for a good deal less!

Generally, the Wi-Fi signal is extremely poor. There are further low levels when it comes to the bunk-beds. They are so low, you can't sit up. How daft is that! They are also noisy and uncomfortable.

Rooms are small, cramped and include a noticeable lack of enthusiasm in the cleaning department. Outside, the approach is depressing (*but outside the hostel's control). You pass through areas of sub-standard housing and homeless people. These features don't do anything to set a positive scene.

There is a great deal of history attached to this place and much of it is attractive. Unfortunately, the ‘lift' features in this category. It seems to have been installed when the place was built (*1914!) and with manually operated doors and continual ‘jamming', the lift quality is definitely … ‘going down'! There are ageing and maintenance issues surrounding towels and bed linen too.