I absolutely LOVE this hostel. 100/10. The owner Annie is amazing, kind, and very generous. The entire staff here was extremely friendly and welcoming, so much so that I extended my stay TWO TIMES IN A ROW. As a foreigner to Hawaii, I experienced NO discrimination here whatsoever, which was very relieving. This is my favorite hostel in Kona. Its located in a very serene & peaceful area, yet it is only minutes away from town & the beach. Much love to Shawn, Kennedy, Rachel, Mya, and everyone else here who works very diligently to make Kona Beach Hostel a beautiful, clean, and excellent representation of the Big Island. I look forward to returning soon. Keep up the good work! -- Manny read more

Korean manager was very rude to me after hours demanding I pay an additional parking fee. She very obviously has no social skills. I have no idea what she is talking about as she has no proof if I owe it or not with receipts. Additionally there is a red cardinal bird banging against my window in my single room unit. read more

Kona Beach Hostel - Red Cardinal - Hostels Near Me - Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

An excellent place to stay on Kona side. walking distance to Hunels beach (4 minutes walk away), town pier (0.9miles), all the shops and restaurants. don't have to drive in town and pay for public parking, leave your car on Walua Road and walk to every place you want to go. thee we hostel is first come first served for parking ($10/nite) Super-duper clean rooms. kitchen has everything one needs to cook in and save $ by skipping restaurant prices. can leave luggage after 10am checkout for as small fee, and not worry about your car. great sunsets! read more

See all

This stay did not really match quality for the price but was very nicely located. Parking on the street just outside the hostel driveway was free, plentiful, and felt safe. The shared kitchen was open air, like most places, had coffee ready made or you could start a pot using the grounds provided (just a common brand, not Kona coffee), people were friendly (met lots of folks as one does in a hostel). Annie was easy to work with. At first she came across as "severe" but that's just her personality, I think. She accommodated all our requests quickly and was friendly when engaged. We rented a private room w/ private bath. For some reason, I was hoping it was a Queen bed but it was actually a Full size, which was small for two, one being 6'4". The room is not available at the moment so I can't see what the details say. This, and the water never really got hot, was probably the two let downs. Overall, if I had to do it over, I'd probably check out the other hostel (simply forgot in my haste to get something reserved) to compare location convenience, and wouldn't mind staying here again if necessary. read more

See all

sally and aaron were so kind and helpful to us the whole stay! awesome common areas where we met lots of people and it was comfortable to sit and chat in many of the areas. beautiful view from the kitchen/ dining area with a oceanfront view. sally recommended us a short walk to the beach access trail which was awesome as well. rooms were clean but could maybe use a bit more attention, also was a bit pricey for the quality of the place! we were out of power for 2 full days following the kona low storm happening at the time, which was rough as we had to use our phones for light but couldn't charge anything! as expected because it was a rough storm and damaged a lot of the whole town, but we would have expected them to have a generator for the building or something in preparation for the storm. there also was an error in our booking where they had given our room to somebody else, but sally was very efficient in figuring it out and getting us a room to stay for the night. we were happy with the change until the owner annie came up to us yelling the next day about how she could have used the bigger room for many more people. which we understood because obviously the bigger room could have been used for more people, but not our fault or choice to be in the larger room. she told us we also needed to consolidate our things in our "private room" to be able to accommodate more people possibly staying. we paid for a private room and did not want to stay with other people and she was not really offering us a solution, just being aggressive from the start for no reason... she ended up switching us to another private room but was not very happy about having to give up another room instead of shoving more people in with us. we did come to a solution but she could for sure work on her unwelcoming attitude/tone towards customers. we were generally happy with the place and area in town as you can basically walk anywhere! overall we were content with the room and stay, but wouldn't have minded paying a little less for the condition and space of the private room we ended up in. read more

Gtfo seriously? $200 for a closet with a jank bed and no towels for the shower? Go fuck yourselves, sincerely, David

The Kona Beach Hostel presents nicely. Seems to be a scam going on: The KBH website defaults to the current date that a reservation is being made; charges the credit card ($$) for that date; then when you show up, there is no reservation for the date that you choose on the website; your choice of date had defaulted to the current date without you noticing, because you chose carefully the date that you needed the reservation for. The manager, Sally, scrambles around talking about how busy they are and might not have a spot, but finds a spot after all and charges another $189 for one night. The room was super small, no room for luggage, with a bunk beds; the room fan covered with thick dust, mold on all the curtains. The hall bathroom had personal care products so old that one of the hair serums was growing two large fungus balls; the bath mat stood in an inch of water that smelled stagnant. My cousin woke up with a sinus headache and a migraine; I woke up with my lungs full of congestion (I'm allergic to mold.) read more

A clean, comfy place that my husband and I rested our heads for one night in a private room. We arrived right around check-in time (3pm) and had to wait an hour for an employee who was cleaning rooms to notice us and check us in, which is really our only complaint. The atmosphere was very chill & quiet, as well as the bathrooms being very tidy & private. People generally head into their rooms around 8pm and after that the grounds are very quiet, but nobody we encountered gave us a weird vibe or creepy smiles. We would stay here again and felt pricing was reasonable. read more

Stayed here for 3 nights in a bunk bed. Great location, just a few minute walk to the water and downtown Kona. The room was small and did not have AC, but the beds were comfy and fans were provided. The hostel had a nice atmosphere with a movie night one day I was there. The owner was kind enough to let us store our luggage for a couple hours after checkout. Overall, had a great stay here! read more

Kona Beach Hostel - Hostel - Hostels Near Me - Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

See all

HIDDEN FEES RUDE OWNER/WORKERS ILLEGALLY DOESN'T ALLOW SERVICE ANIMALS They prey and people not reading "fine print." I don't like to leave bad reviews and try to find the best out of places, but because of the owner it made me wish they would get shut down. Calling doesn't seem to be in the owner/workers vocab. We tried calling with different phones and many times but they still did not answer. When my friend first booked a room they were curt and rude to her but it was the only place she could stay. When we arrived and asked for more lodging the worker was rude to us, I don't know if she was having a bad day but the way she talked to us was the worst experience I have had when traveling. The BIGGEST problem was when we were about to get our lodging my friend told them he had a service animal and prior to this we talked about getting a room for my group together so no other people would be in the room. The worker argued with us stating that they couldn't EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE NOT LEGALLY ALLOWED TO DENY A PERSON WITH A SERVICE ANIMAL. The owner then stated that the other guests would ask for a refund because of the service animal, which is completely insane (as other people have said). My friend then had to talk to the owner on the phone, she was very rude and saying that she understands because she has a dog at home (not the same thing at all) and saying that they had the right to refuse any customer, which is wrong given the reason of why they are refusing. After this, I did not want their business so we had to sleep in our car because of them. My friend that did stay told us they gave her a twin bed that was very thin and still charged her for a queen bed, and on top of that also charged hidden fees they did not previously discuss. I am going to be reporting this business and hope that they get closed down due to rudeness, illegally denying, and over charging with hidden fees. read more

I rarely write reviews and I almost never complain about accomodations. But this one, I had to do: I am deeply disappointed with my recent stay at Kona Beach Hostel. The place was dirty and unkempt, with a strong odor throughout the building. To make matters worse, the staff were incredibly unfriendly and unhelpful, making it clear that they did not want to be bothered with the needs of their guests. You are not allowed on their property after the 10am checkout in the morning. They threatened to call the police if we would not immediately leave when we were sitting in the outside area waiting for our Uber. I would not recommend this hostel to anyone and will be sure to tell others about my terrible experience. It was a complete waste of time and money. Unfortunately, it is one of the only ones in Kona. read more

Grounds are kept. It is close to everything. I'm sure the larger rooms are nice and worth it. However the bunk section is definitely not. The room feels like it's 6x6". Stuffing 8 people in one small room. Pictures on web look bigger than really is. Seems to attract a certain crowd. The staff and owners are ridged and have not embodied the vibe of the island. Not a Pono company. read more

Spider web on beds. No AC. They don't have glass in their windows. The reception lady is evil. And as a cherry on top, they add a $24 cleaning fee upon check in to all rooms. Do yourself a favour and go to another hostel read more

Don't believe the fake positive review(s?). They have bed bugs and refuse to refund money. Super shady, owner is literally insane and starts a yelling when we show her bed bug bites and want to leave. Save yourself a lot of headache and just AVOID AT ALL COSTS read more

I feel obliged to leave an excellent rating for this hostel. It is clean and well put together, with access to the waterfront just a block and a half away (most of the beaches here are rocky fyi). It's also very close to the downtown, 0.3 miles. There are also many rooms and they have private rooms as well, some with fans some with AC. We were kind to the staff and patient and they treated us equally, even when we screwed up our booking and changed the number of days we wanted to stay. To the bad reviews: While checking in, I witnessed some people being incredibly rude towards the host. I just couldn't believe it. Everyone being sassy in the reviews are just impatient (witnessed it first hand), demanding (it's a $55 hostel not the Marriott get over it), and lack common sense (so very not aloha). Could the check in be smoother? Sure. And if you traveled 6 hours or 28 hours you're probably tired. But don't take it out on the front desk staff and act like your gods gift to Hawaii when you're sharing a bunk bed and a bathroom. read more

Honestly, I think everyone leaving awful reviews haven't stayed in many hostels before. If you're expecting a five star resort then you need to go up the road a pay five star prices. It's a block from the beach for $60 and as far as hostels go, this one was pretty clean. The lady who checked me in was pretty nice to me too. The main reason I dropped a star was because they gave me a beach towel to use as my bath towel for the week (kinda weird) and they don't have a phone that you can call (just text) which was a bit frustrating since I had a late flight coming in and was worried about arriving after check in closed. In the end, it all worked out - I had a clean place to stay close to the beach so can't really complain. read more

Corroborate previous reviews describing poor service, making this a pretty unpleasant experience. We booked a private room for two with a bunkbed using HostelWorld. We checked in 15 minutes early and were informed that the room wasn't ready (as we expected). However, when we went to drop our luggage in the room before leaving to wait elsewhere, the host walked in with folded sheets and handed them to us, saying "why don't you just make the beds." The room had not been cleaned and the previous guest's blankets were still on the bed. Later, we asked for towels as there were none provided in the room. Another woman at the front desk went to grab them, but the host from earlier intercepted and instructed her to only give us one- saying we would be charged extra for a second towel, even though we booked the room for two guests. Other notable things: the host complained to us at check-in about "guests who stay only for one night" (as we were), the room was hot with no A/C, check-out was at 10AM (earlier than any place I've ever stayed at) and if you want to store any luggage for a late flight you'll be charged $20/person. Forget this place and stay at My Hawaii Hostel down the road, which is cheaper and includes towels, laundry service, A/C, 12PM check-out, free bag storage + a shower after check-out your last night, and, most importantly, has a great vibe - we had an awesome stay there! Customer service matters when it comes to basic expectations, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a made bed and two towels for a two person private room when you're paying a rate of $110/night. read more

Originally I was suppose to be at pineapple Park hostile. But my plane took off late, my phone died, and I got there at 10:30pm. And NO one was at the front desk. They gave me a confirmation number that did no help in getting my room I already paid for. That night I had to sleep on the street cause no hotel was open. I got kicked out by security guards all night and treated like shit by all of them. When I spoke to the owner the next day, she said it was my fault, and she was waiting for me till 11pm. Which was a lie because I called her 3 times at 10:30 and her phone was off! Then she said she would give me a good discount at her other location (kona beach hostel) @ $149 a night..she said I would get the best room with an ocean view. Ok I got the ocean view but not worth $149 there was no TV and it was a tiny room the size of a prison cell. Plus later on I found out that price was NOT a discount, but their regular price! Aside from that, the kitchen had ants and the bathroom had giant roaches! I hate to hate on small businesses especially, but it's not hate if it's true! The host was nice but the owner is full of it! I'ma say an extra prayer for her! And Hopefully I saved someone from having the same experience by writing this review! read more

I've stayed at this hostel a while longer than I intended to, Probably a week and a half, and I've loved it. Ignore the naysayers, I've seen it improve immensely. The staff is great, I've networked with many people from around the world, some of which I went out with and had a great time... anyways its a great spot. Would recommend. read more

I was given the nastiest stare while parking, I wave hello to smooth things over but the stare continue. I walk to the front desk where Victoria was sitting and she completely ignored me, never once did she look up at me, until I asked if this is where I check in at. I watched her greet other with a smile while handing them the wifi password and amenities, while I on the other hand had to beg for such. I was the only person of color on the property and Victoria made sure I would be treated differently. She was never at the front desk and when she was,she was always on a personal call speaking Russian and chain smoking. She never answered any phone calls. She keep the gate locked hindering customers who had early morning excursions, but you couldn't call to tell her because she wouldn't answer. I tried complaining to the manager today. I spoke to a lady named Ann and she would not get me to a manager instead she hung up on me. This is completely unacceptable and unprofessional. The beds are hard, the rooms are hot. They even have the nerves to lock the kitchen with the passcode available. They have hidden fees, a lot of rules. It's no freedom here. THIS PLACE NEEDS TO BE SHUT DOWN. Go to Hawaii hostel instead. read more

Our overall stay at the hostel was fine although we found out we were overcharged when we compared prices with fellow travelers after we had already paid. It was advertised at $40-45 a night and we were charged $65 a night for dorm style room whereas our roommates had only been charged $45. We also were almost forced by one of the staff to pay for two loads of laundry ($6!!) rather than one load when the load that we had barely filled half of the machine. However, the employees were friendly enough and the rooms were comfortable. It was nice that we were able to store our backpacks at the hostel after the night we stayed while we went and explored. read more