Selina Birmingham, Birmingham | ConcertHotels.com

Great staff; great hotel; would stay again when in Birmingham.

Liked: Everything.
Disliked: Nothing.

I would not recommend staying...

Liked: The bunks are enclosed with curtains and have large lockers
Disliked: The dorm I was in had no hot water my whole stay and I was made to have freezing cold showers. The kitchen was unequipped and absolutely stank! I don’t think it was cleaned at all during my stay. The bed was uncomfortable and the ensuite toilet seat was broken.

Passable

Disliked: It wan absent facility in my single room that I paid above 150 gbp

It’s a fair experience. The...

Liked: I like the serenity. It’s a calm environment.
Disliked: The fact that the coffee machine got spoilt. I was unable to have coffee throughout my stay. Also, having to put down my card details just because if there’s any damage. That’s not the case the last time I checked in.

Passable

Disliked: I've stayed here many times before over the past few years when it was the hostel Selina. It's always been really good.But, this time was different. The staff were unfriendly. The bar area seemed to be closed. The building seemed uncared for; open windows banging in the wind.It seems since PH have taken over that this hostel has begun to decline.I hope I'm wrong.

Absent staff, tiny room, unacceptable...

Liked: The pigeon who occasionally cooed outside our tiny window was nice.The bed was fine; with the door closed, you could almost walk around it without having to turn sideways!I like to learn. From this stay, I learned that basing hotel choices on the aesthetic appearance of room photos is a mistake.Another thing I learned by browsing this hostel's page on Booking.com is that the price I paid for our miniscule room (>£100 for what turned out to be a 10m2 room) when booking through a link from Trainline is much higher than the price of a direct booking in spite of my having booked over three weeks in advance.
Disliked: We had numerous problems during our stay.Firstly, the room listing indicates that towels are included, but the receptionist tried to charge us a £4 fee. When I showed her the booking details, she 'compromised' and gave us one towel (between two of us).Further items in the room booking were "Toilet, Bath or shower," tempered by the ambiguous "Shared bathroom". After being shown to our room, we discovered that the toilet and shower we were expected to use were an en suite to a different (unoccupied) room opposite ours, which we were presumably expected to share, since otherwise the set-up was simply absurd. I went for a shower, and was delighted to find that the water barely reached lukewarm: cold enough that I decided against washing my hair, since I did not find a hairdryer. There was of course no towel provided for the floor.To make things worse, a little later another person closed the automatically locking door to the room giving access to the bathroom. When I went to reception at 9pm to request that the room be reopened, I was informed by some other guests that the reception was closed, and they pointed me to some other toilets on the premises, further from our room and shared with more people, with no shower.The reception was unstaffed from 9pm until 8:10am the next morning. I dread to think what we could have done if anything more serious happened... When another employee arrived (besides the cleaner, who simply shrugged at me when I asked if she was able to open rooms) they were apparently not aware of the arrangement, and directed me to a bathroom with a shower on another floor. In the end, we didn't use it, opting to take our leave.As for the room itself: there were some noise issues, including music from a nearby venue.This was a needlessly stressful and EXPENSIVE stay, and I will never book here again.

Comfortable safe convenient stay

Liked: Available, spacious. Crisp thick cotton sheets.
Disliked: No towel, noisy doors closing through the night. Kettle very difficult to locate far from my room. Green damp on bedroom wall, rough chip board furniture.