To make it short: Never again. The single room I had had a strong moldy smell to it, but the sheets seemed clean. The kitchen was a mess and just filthy when I was there (red house). Actually the whole building stank. The staff was pretty indifferent upon check in. No explanation of the facilities as in other hostels. The location has its up and down sides. It´s up a very steep hill, parking is terrible if you come late, which is after 6. On the other hand you really do have a spectacular view from the lounge, which I didn´t really enjoy too much because of the filthy surroundings. By far the worst hostel in a 7 weeks stay in NZ.

I was expecting a very hard walk from downtown to hippo lodge due to what people had written here but.. it is not that hard and yes: the view is very beautiful! The room was not so good but i wanted a prvate room with private bathroom so.. it was ok for the situation.

We traveled in NZ for five weeks, and the Hippo Lodge was our favorite place to stay--even with the steep walk up from town (worth it)! We were awestruck by the views. We were in the lower "White House," but even it had spectacular views over the town and lake to the mountains beyond. We were fascinated to just sit in the large living room and watch the weather and clouds develop from afar. The upper building has even more extensive views.

The living room, kitchen, bedroom arrangement was most pleasant, giving us the right mixture of privacy and community. We shared the areas with only two other rooms. Our room had an en suite (private) bath. The room, bathroom, kitchen, and large living room were all well-cared for and immaculately clean. We are very sensitive to noise, and the Hippo gave us nothing to complain about. Quiet neighborhood, quiet guests.

We were able to grocery shop at a large supermarket less than a 10-minute walk away (not down the steep part). We could also shop in a market in the main business area on the way up to the Hippo.

The staff did so many nice things for us while we were there--offering advice, loaning us maps, getting ice for our bruises, making sure we were warm enough at night, helping arrange activities and transportation (even ones involving no payments), arranging cash-credit payment so that we could use up all our bills and coins on the last day in NZ, booking (at a discount) the airport shuttle and reconfirming, etc., etc. Thank you, Shana!

Compared to the prices at other NZ establishments (even other hostels), the Hippo Lodge is a very smart bargain in this era of the weak US dollar. It's not your average backpacker hostel.

This is an older style hostel - 3 converted houses all with character so there are not a lot of people together. I liked it because it was in a quiet street but I was still only 5 minutes from the centre of town. It was very clean and kept clean every day which is important to me and they provided access to fast wireless which I needed at the time. The manager was very helpful in organising my time there and even arranged a shuttle to the airport. At reception you could pick up pancake mix to make your own pancakes by just adding water. They were delicious. I fell in love with Queenstown - what an amazing place and Hippo Lodge was the perfect place for me to be. I would go back.