Hostel Review

The postcard holiday town of Sumner is a only short drive from Christchurch, but a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre. Sumner is a popular weekend getaway for families around the Christchurch area. There is limited backpacker accommodation in Sumner, so we opted for the Marine Backpackers.

Sumner is a small town, so this centrally located hostel puts us minutes from the amenities and a short walk to the popular surfing beach. The town of Sumner itself is littered with surf shops and a good selection of restaurants to cater for the family holiday market.

The Marine backpackers hostel is well presented, and we found the staff friendly and helpful on arrival, despite having to wait for our room to be cleaned. The dorms are clean and comfortable, but very basic – no other furniture was in our room apart from the bunk beds. A simple bed side table, or even a chair, would have been a welcomed addition. The hostel has a public bar attached to the building, but rarely gets loud and we hardly noticed it.

The hostel reminded us of a large house, which helps create the warm friendly atmosphere. Downstairs, a family style kitchen and lounge area is the main place to socialise and spend evenings. The kitchen is more suited to a home, and thus doesn’t handle more than four people (this applies to both kitchens) very well, indeed dinner time gets very busy and very crowded.

The hostel is kept very clean by a small team of cleaners. The showers are kept in very good shape, which makes a big difference to lasting impressions. You could even take a shower here without wearing flip flops, you have more chance of contracting a bleach infection than anything else. The cleaning staff are friendly enough, but take their jobs as cleaners a little too seriously, often asking us to leave the lounge/kitchen to wipe a table, or dust a bookshelf. They never have enough time, apparently.

Like many hostels, you always get the odd long term resident/wierdo who has stayed at the hostel for far too long, who is far too old to be there in the first place, and has no intention on leaving. Marine backpackers is no exception to this rule, but a hostel wouldn’t be complete without the odd wierdo that walks around the kitchen talking to himself. It’s good comedy to converse with him, but it gets a little annoying if you do so for more than three sentences.

The Good:

• Friendly, warm hostel
• Very clean
• Pleasant area with good garden

The not so Good:

• Cramped kitchens
• High end priced

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