A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof: 2025 Review & Tips For Staying

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CONSIDERING A STAY AT A&O HOSTEL HAMBURG HAUPTBAHNHOF?

You’re in the right place as I spent 4 days in Hamburg, and stayed at the A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof for the duration of my stay.

Before booking a bed or a room in a hostel, it’s always important to read some reviews to get an idea of whether the hostel is good or not. Learning some tips for your stay is always a good idea too!

Luckily for you, I have written a complete and in-depth review of my time at the hostel, as well as providing some top tips.

🇩🇪 When planning a trip to Hamburg, I recommend using:
✈️ Flights: Skyscanner
🏨 Hotels: Booking.com
💵 Hostels: Hostelworld
🗺 Tours & Activities: Viator and GetYourGuide
🚗 Car Rental: Discover Cars
🚌 Transport: Flixbus
🏥 Travel Insurance: Safetywing
📱E-SIM: Airalo
💻 VPN: Surfshark

A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof Review

A&O Hostels are a chain of hostels found in lots of countries across Europe such as The Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Germany of course, and many more.

There are four A&O Hostels in Hamburg, A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, Hamburg Hammer Kirche, Hamburg Reeperbahn and Hamburg City. This review focuses on Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, but most of the hostels are very similar, so the review stands for them all.

I chose to stay in A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof because it has a pretty high rating on Booking.com (for a hostel) with 6.3/10. From my experience, hostels are normally around the 5/10 mark on Booking, so it’s clear that A&O is one of the better hostels.

My trip to Hamburg was over Valentine’s Day so I stayed in a private room with my girlfriend as opposed to staying in a dorm as I usually would in a hostel. So although my review will be based on the private room, I am sure it still applies to the dorm beds too. From my experience, the quality of one room reflects on all rooms in a hostel.

Our private room was very clean and tidy. The cleanliness of the hostel is 6.7/10 which again, for a hostel, is good. You have to remember that you’re staying in a hostel and not a 5-star hotel, so your cleanliness expectations have to be slightly lower. That’s not to say the hostel is dirty or disgusting- it’s not- there may just be stains on the ceiling for example.

The communal areas were also clean too. There are a few games in the reception area like Pool and Snooker.

One of the best things about A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof was definitely the location. When visiting a city, I always prefer to stay near the central station and Hamburg is no different. To find a hostel with “Hauptbahnhof” in the name was the perfect find.

Being near Hamburg Central Station allows you to get from Hamburg Airport to Hamburg Hbf and to your hotel really quickly and vice versa when you are leaving. The accommodation in the area is also cheaper as you don’t have a view of Speicherstadt for example.

And everything is within walking distance. Most of the popular tourist attractions in Hamburg are around the harbour. And this is only about a 20-minute walk from the central station. From A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof to Miniatur Wunderland, for example, is exactly a 20-minute walk.

I also found the staff to be friendly at A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. Most of the staff spoke really good English (which was helpful with my nicht sehr gut German) and were happy to help and give tips about visiting Hamburg. This is always a huge bonus of staying in a hostel.

For our stay, we opted to have breakfast included in our stay. To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend this. It wasn’t great and we could have saved money by finding breakfast for ourselves.

It’s the perfect place to spend a weekend in Hamburg.

All in all, you should definitely book your stay at A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof as it is an excellent hostel and I would recommend it to anyone visiting Hamburg. The rooms are nice, the hostel is clean, the staff are friendly and

A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof Room Options

There are plenty of options for you to choose from throughout your stay at A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. There are 3 dorm room options and 5 private room options. As with any hostel, if you are visiting with children, you need a private room as you need to be 18 to stay in a dorm room.

It’s not often you see a hostel offering a private room with only a single bed, so that’s a pretty unique but very cool offering from A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. Of course, if you are a solo traveller backpacking Hamburg, you have 3 different-sized dorm rooms to choose from.

The rooms are very well-priced and you can get a dorm room for as low as €9 at certain times of the year. Like any hostel, the prices vary depending on how busy tourism is. For example, a hostel will be cheaper in March than in July.

Nonetheless, the rooms here are great quality and affordable too. What more can you ask for?

A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof Tips For Your Stay

Before staying in any hostel, I think it is important to know some top tips and tricks for that specific hostel. So here are 7 tips I have came up with for A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof.

1. Fill in the check-in form: When you arrive at A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, there will be a table with pens and forms on it. You need to fill one of these in before checking in at the reception desk. It requires standard check-in information like your nationality, passport number and signature.
2. Hamburg has a tourist tax: Anyone visiting Hamburg is required to pay a tourist tax for their accommodation. This isn’t included in your booking and needs to be paid upon your arrival at the hostel. Top Tip: Students aren’t required to pay the tax, so make sure to bring your ID if you are in full-time education.

3. Bring a padlock if you are staying in a dorm: This is a pretty universal rule across all hostels in the world but it still applies to A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. The dorm rooms have lockers but you need to provide your own padlock.
4. There are other A&O Hostels in Hamburg: If the A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is booked out for the dates you are visiting Hamburg, there are other A&O Hostels in Hamburg that you can stay at. They are all good hostels and you will get a similar experience in any of the hostels.
5. Bring ear plugs: Depending on where your room is, you can be pretty close to the train tracks which can get pretty loud early in the morning from about 5-6 am so you’ll want to have ear plugs to cancel out the noise.

6. Check-out on time: In some hostels, you can get away with staying past check-out time, that’s not the case with A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. There was a cleaner knocking on our door 5 minutes past check-out time asking us to leave.
7. Towels and bed linen are not provided in dorms: You need to rent a towel and bed linen from reception. A towel is €1.50 per night and bed linen €3.50 per night. In private rooms, both are included in your stay.

Is A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof Safe?

Yes, A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is a safe hostel. Naturally, staying in a hostel is less safe than staying in a hotel and staying in a dorm is less safe than staying in a private room. That’s not to say it’s unsafe, it’s simply less safe but that’s obviously going to be the case.

Don’t worry, A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is a safe place to stay for your trip to Hamburg.

There is a 24-hour reception and there are always staff around. And Hamburg is safe in general, aside from the hostel. So while I cannot personally guarantee your safety, you will more than likely be completely fine for the duration of your trip.

Are there lockers in A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof?

There are locker boxes underneath each bed in all of the dorm room options in A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. As said in the top tips, you do need to bring your own padlock. But if you stay in hostels regularly, this will be common knowledge as best practice.

And when it comes to luggage storage before check-in and after check-out, there are metal lockers near the breakfast area. It costs €2 for 24 hours for a small locker, which did fit 2 backpacks for us, so a small locker is more than enough. Make sure you have coins to pay for the lockers as you cannot use a card.

Is A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof Clean?

In my opinion, yes, A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is clean. The room was clean, the linen was clean, the bathroom was clean, and everywhere was clean.

The only criticism I could have, but it doesn’t really involve cleanliness is that the elevators are a bit outdated. They were quite cramped and didn’t feel the safest to be honest. There is the option to take the stairs if you prefer.

But yes, the hostel is clean and you don’t need to have any cleanliness concerns about the hostel.

Is A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof In A Good Location?

A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is in the perfect location. In fact, I think that it’s one of the biggest selling points for the hostel. As the central station is literally in the name, you are only a few minutes’ walk away from Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. So it’s very easy to get to and from the airport.

And everything in terms of sights and tourist attractions is within walking distance. You can walk for about 20 minutes and reach any of the most popular things to see and do which makes Hamburg worth visiting. It’s a great way to save money while visiting Hamburg.

What Is The Atmosphere Like In A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof?

To be honest, this is probably somewhere that A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof lacks. There were always people in the communal areas like the reception, but people didn’t seem to want to interact or meet new people.

Of course, this is completely luck of the draw and it depends on who is staying at the hostel at the same time as you. But the hostel doesn’t put on any events etc. to promote getting to know new people.

What Is The Breakfast Like In A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof?

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend breakfast but that is just my opinion. I found it to have limited options and most of the food wasn’t that great. One thing I did find pretty cool was a machine to make your own pancakes and watch them move along a conveyor belt while they cooked.

But I wouldn’t recommend it. Instead, visit a REWE and buy some pastries and fruit for a fraction of the price. I got a delicious croissant from REWE for about €0.69 when I was in Hamburg, an absolute bargain!

A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof: Conclusion

And there you have it, a complete and in-depth review of A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof along with tips for your stay.

If you are visiting Hamburg, it’s definitely one of the best hostels in the city. As a chain of hostels, you can’t go wrong with an A&O- they know what makes a good hostel.

Enjoy your time in Hamburg and of course, enjoy your stay at the A&O Hostel Hamburg Hauptbahnhof.

Visiting Hamburg? Book your stay at A&O Hamburg Hauptbahnhof!