Pineapple Park Hostel - Kona, Kealakekua HI

Clean, cozy and friendly owners! Right across the street from a good breakfast and coffee spot and has nice patio areas with an ocean view.

Great place to stay in South Kona. If you want to do snorkeling and hiking and hit the South Point and black and green sand beaches, then this is a great stepping off spot. From the road it looked a bit old and small, but walk through the locked gate and it opens to a beautiful area with gardens, ocean views, sunset and many places to sit spread out all around.

Kitchen is great, and has all we needed. Across the road is a coffee shop HiCo, and they were having a monthly night market one night we were there, so fun to chill out and walk across the road for live music and food trucks. Other days, its yummy coffee and breakfast and lunch, so if you don't want to do cooking in the Hostel kitchen, its easy to go across to the HiCo.

Dorms were large, and had lots of room to spread out, even when full of people. Wifi worked fast, and as I was working from Kona, it made it easy to get on Zoom calls and upload work.

Sally and Annie were so nice, and the little dog Lily was friendly and made me miss my dog.

BEWARE all around shady!
I am shocked by the good reviews here if you read from other sites you will see why.
Do not book late you won't be able to check in and if you do you will probably get charged a late fee (there are a ton of different fees she tries to charge and apparently fine print)
I just wasted $53 looking for somewhere to sleep after plans fell through (I called emailed and texted with no response)
It's a no win situation and a shady person to deal with.
I could have just booked a nice hotel. But I didn't just loose $53 maybe I could get over that BUT
Update* I am now home in NC and ANOTHER sum of 53.19 was taken from my account!
I tried to resolve the issue for days and instead she took more money not a good person in general if you read reviews from different sites you will see why you should avoid dealing with this person. The only response after multiple texts for days was what's the confirmation number so I was hopeful she was going to refund me which would be the decent thing to do but instead charged me again. This is not an accident but definitely on purpose because I've tried to contact with no avail.

I chose a private room that was advertised at $130 for my partner and myself, and was totally blown away by the overpricing and under-delivering. The showers and toilets were under a seating area, all open air with closing doors, the washer and dryer were secured with Masterlocks, the kitchen wasn't appealing to step foot into, and our room was one of the noisest places I've ever slept.

But it's a hostel. $130 would be okay on the Big Island for a night, right?
How about $185?

When I asked about additional charges, the hostess was unpleasant, accusatory, defensive, and hostile (pun not intended). She refused to make any adjustments, and blamed all issues on other guests, Hostelworld, and inflation. I'd rather sleep on the beach than stay here again. It'd be far more comfortable.

This is the best hostel i have stayed in. I can not recommend this place enough. The place is very clean, the owner is nice and the highlight of this hostel is Sally. Sally is the point of contact for the guests and she is the sweetest person. She takes extra attention and remembers everything.

The beds are clean
The rooms are clean
The shower is clean
The bathroom is clean
The location is good
The wifi is strong and nice
The scenery from the hostel is nice
The patio is a +5 points
One could just stay in this hostel and walk around it for a week and nit get bored
A farmer’s market near by
Restaurants to your left right up and down. (good food)

Overall, either they have changed how they do business or the bad reviews are fake. I stayed there for 7 days and never heard a complaint from
Anyone.

THIS IS A TOP 3 HOSTEL in the world, and I've been to many (more than 50)! This location is perfect for snorkeling, Volcanoes, National Parks, south side activities, Farmer's Markets in Captain Cook, trail hiking, Pizza, Poke and people one meets. I didn't have a rental car, and it was EASY to join up with other guests to ride to activities.
Hostel was super clean, fresh smelling rooms, lots of fantastic spots to hang out (sunsets are wonderful here), kitchen with everything one needs to cook in. BONUS: immediately across the road is a brand new HiCO (Hawaii Coffee) shop, with excellent coffee and avocado toast in the mornings. Diagonally across the road is a mini-market open late with snacks and microvavable food I got to tide me over when the flight arrived late.
WITH an email or text to ask for permission, the staff stayed open late for me when flight arrival and pickup was delayed. I paid $65 from the airport for uber, but they have a person who gives rides for 50 to airport and 30 to down town Kona.
DEFINITELY RECOMMEND THIS PP Hostel.

Nice cute place, fairly reasonable pricing. If you show up late you will be made to pay a $40 late check in fee. "Has to be cash". Half used soap bars in the showers too

When we arrived for our 2 night private bedroom stay, there were 3 police cars in front of the hostel. The first feeling we had was that we had to get out immediately. Sadly, we didnt.

Because there were police cars in front, the check-in counter was busy. We got 3 post-its aggressively pushed into our hands. As we were in limbo for an hour after that happening, we finally found our room which did not have an outside window.

The following two days the stress did not subdue, as the staff kept us on our toes. As we hadnt been checked in well, the check-in staff violently screamed at us from a distance: "TONIGHT YOU HAVE TO PAY! ". Us, gobsmacked but definitely finding the humor in this all, confirmed that we would - and we ofcourse did. Apple pay did not work -please take a note of that while choosing for this hostel- so we rushed back in woth two other creditcards.

Going into the second day of our stay we happily did connect with the staff and the owner was really nice. Though, she firmly reminded us that we needed to check out, 45 minutes before checkout time. Luckily she just had a nice vacation in Dallas, making her the best encounter we've had at pineapple park. Though, the bitter aftertaste was left that because of heavy overpricing and smart location-marketing we definitely helped her pay for that vacation.

2 stars, because the showers and kitchen itself, along with the other guests visiting were amazing.

If you look at their response below, no responsibility or even apology is added. I think this definitely shows for lack of proper (MA) hospitality experience, where there is room to pay for it. Dont go here!

I don’t usually review places, but I feel compelled to because I think this hostel is misrepresented in the reviews. It’s a nice place, clean rooms, pretty grounds. The woman who owns it, Annie, was plenty nice during check in. It’s not as modern or “nice” as other hostels I stayed at on the island, but it’s a very budget friendly alternative to staying in Kona. As with any booking, just read the fine print before reserving, will save you a lot of trouble:). Thanks Annie!

Customer service is very bad and follow-up very slow. In addition their cancellation policy is very bad and the deposit for the reservation is minimum half of the total and non-refundable. So I made a reservation and no confirmation email was sent to me.

Clean rooms, nice grounds, good bathrooms, nice kitchen.

They say they have laundry but there are locks on the machines and the woman who runs the place is very protective. We stayed two nights and were able to get one load of laundry done. She did not let us do our own laundry, and did it in a way I wouldn't have.

The woman who runs the place (Annie) is awful. Rude, controlling and overbearing. She followed us around anxiously to be sure we were out (off the property!) by 10am (we were). A very negative taint on what could have been a pleasant stay.

Loved our stay! If I ever find myself in Kona again, I know where I'll be staying. Thanks for the rides to town, Annie!