We love Big Island and Hawaii has become our go to place to find some relaxation, especially since the pandemic. We were really looking forward to staying at the hostel, given the beautiful pictures of the property, the location, and the price. Unfortunately, our experience during this portion of the stay was not great and was enough to make us reconsider AirBnBing in general.
We arrived the first night around 9pm. The listing mentions the place is remote and we did not have any trouble locating it. However, our room, which was on the second floor, had no lights over the stairway. To make things worse, the steps are uneven and the stairway is steep. We tried explaining this to the owner and property manager, but the owner was not sympathetic at all to the fact that we were vacationing with older parents and the unlit stairway with steep and uneven stairs was a fall risk since the bathroom and kitchen were on the first floor. The onsite manager was helpful and explained that the lights are on a timer that was broken but he assured he would try to get the lights working the next night.
The second night we arrived back around 7pm and yes the lights were on, although a bit dim for a stairway. Yes we were okay, knowing this is an eco-friendly off the grid hostel. However, Around 1030pm, the entire hostel lost power. To make things worse, the water supply was also switched off. So no running water in the kitchen or bathrooms. The manager said nothing can be done for the night but he would get the generator going in the morning. None of the guests could use the bathrooms all night until 8 am the next morning.
When we reached out to the owner he replied saying we were making this conversation uncomfortable and an unpleasant experience for him. When we were the ones living with the discomfort. AirBnB support were not helpful either. We decided to abandon our stay here after that and found alternate accommodations on the island on our dime.