The Kirketon Hotel Sydney

I'll start with the good - great neighborhood, cool bar downstairs, generally friendly and helpful staff. Now the not so good - the room was rather small. There is one light in the shower, but it's in the back of the shower wall at mid thigh level. Very odd. We stayed three nights and I'm pretty sure they only cleaned our room once. The second night we were there, I went up to the room before my husband (he was at the front desk). I opened the door and a huge cockroach came running from the bathroom area into the middle of the floor. I immediately went downstairs because I wasn't going to touch it. My husband came back up with me and we couldn't find where it went. As we were walking back to the door I saw it in his shoe that was sitting by the chair. He carried the shoe downstairs and we showed it to the front desk. He asked us if we wanted him to call maintenance. It was 2:00 in the morning, so we said no. After that event, I was on the lookout every time we were in the room. The morning that we checked out, I saw three more - one on the wall by the bed, one on the floor and one in the bathroom. I went downstairs and told the front desk (it was a new guy). He told me he was very sorry, it had never hapened before, and he would make a note of it. End of story. There was also a note on our window that said we couldn't open the windows due to health reasons. I don't know what that means, but it seemed sketchy to me.

i enjoyed this wondrful hotel so much .........so frindly ......close to everything.........but still felt like a private quiet neighborhood .......eventhough there was a very popular restaurant and bar on the first floor it did not interfere with the personal feel and relaxed attitude of this wonderful little/big hotel

We have stayed before and like the hotel. The location is fantastic, walking distance to many great restaurants and also shopping in Oxford St. The rooms are smallish but the beds are comfortable. I like the decor, although the furniture is now starting to be a bit tired. Will stay again.

we were tourists and the location is in the heart of the Sydney nightlife, cafe district. staff are incredibly friendly and helpful. rooms are small, but very workable if you can work out of a suitcase. housekeeping was a little spotty but room was clean and functional.

Good location, close to city and to transport, Individual feel to the hotel, which is a major plus over chain hotels. Thoughtful decoration.

Would be better if able to order breakfast there. Staff were very nice and tried to be as helpful as possible.

After a wonderful stay at another hotel this was a big disappointment. It's a very weird place where the dominance of dark atmosphere and black color seems to be employed to hide the dirty rather than being stylish. The room they got us had a steady leak from the AC and was really humid - thanks God they agreed to change us to another one! The region is a kind of red light district with both go-go and normal night clubs, very near to a train station. Well, that's the good part. The bad is that the area is stinky, dangerous, dirty, with homeless, drunk and high people around all day long... I'm telling: it's stinky... Well, as you may see the price, I was expecting something REALLY different, because we pay so much!

Unfortunetely we didn't have the best experience at the Kirketon. The room stunk of cigarettes, there were long hairs over the bathroom floor and on the towels, and I narrowly escaped being electrocuted by the kettle in our room after it blew up (the electrical products have never been safety tested and are quite old). What made this worse was the way staff dealt with it - they basically pretended it was all okay. I wrote to Kirketon management about my experience and they never replied. For this reason they won't get a second chance; I will never stay there again.

Staff were pleasant and very helpful. The hotel was probably uber cool a couple of years ago, but is looking a little shop worn now with the carpet on the stairs being threadbare. Worst problem was lighting which was quite moody, but made it impossible to apply makeup. Also wonder about the thickness of the walls, having been awoken at an early hour by bonking in the next room.

This is possibly the darkest hotel I've ever been to. It's so dark that it's depressing. There is no light in the rooms and everything is black. The fact that there is no elevator means you have to haul your luggage up sets of staircases. It may be 'chic' but certainly not somewhere I would ever recommend to stay.