An (Honest) Review of Selina Antigua from a Digital Nomad

I was traveling in Guatemala with another remote worker, so we both were prioritizing great wifi over anything else when choosing our hotels/hostels. Guatemala has a fantastic hostel culture, everyone we met during our travels on tours or while riding in shuttles was jumping from one hostel to another – which is really fun if you’re a Digital Nomad because it makes it so much easier to make friends. We decided to stay at the name-brand hostel chain, Selina. It’s known to be the most reliable “fancy” hostel that caters mainly to remote workers and an older crowd, think the mid-20s to 30s.

I hadn’t stayed in a Selina before because they were always ungodly expensive in Mexico ($70 per night for a hostel bed in Tulum? No thank you!). In Guatemala the Selinas were a lot more affordable, we stayed in Selina Antigua and Selina Lake Atitlan and it was around $20 per night per bunk in a 4 bed room.

✅ Pros: Gorgeous common areas, perfect location, good breakfasts, a community of other young people, and Digital Nomads with planned events and tours.

❌ Cons: The dorms were super small and dirty, with an even smaller en-suite single-stall bathroom that was too close to be sound (or smell 🤢) proof. I wouldn’t want to stay here again unless I was with 4 friends and we were able to book a whole room for ourselves, or unless I had a private room.

Cost

Selina Antigua is one of the more budget-friendly Selinas I’ve seen. These are the costs posted online:

Private room shared bath: starting at $35 per night
Private room ensuite bath: starting at $55 per night
12-bed mixed dorm: starting at $10 per night
4-bed mixed dorm: Starting at $15 per night
6-bed single-gender dorm: Starting at $15 per night

We paid around $22 per night per person after taxes and everything else for a 4-bed mixed dorm, but we were there on a weekend.

Tip: you save 30% at Selina Antigua if you book in person (but of course, you risk the hostel being full!)

Why Stay at Selina Antigua?

The common area is gorgeous, that’s the reason why people stay in a Selina. There’s a kitchen, gym-y area (didn’t look like a lot of equipment though), a pool, a floating bed, a courtyard, hammocks, a gift shop, and then they also plan a bunch of activities for the guests. It reminds me of a really fancy college dorm that meets Silicon Valley startup vibe where they just have so much for the guests to do and so many gorgeous amenities that make it worth staying there.

This photo is from Selina Antigua’s website – but you can see the dorms are nothing like the common areas. The beds are super close together and there are no curtains or anything to elevate the space like they usually have in higher-end hostel dorms I’ve stayed in.

Issues

In Selina Antigua the rooms are a lot smaller and less nice than Selina Atitlan, in fact, there is almost no styling on the dorms in Selina Antigua and all of the design goes towards common spaces. Which is fine, but the bathrooms are all ensuite (one per dorm) and they are tiny, old, and dirty. They do provide toiletries but some of the tubes were empty, and there was a Selina-brand empty bottle on the floor of the shower.

All of this is a whatever but when you’re sharing a single-use ensuite bathroom in a tiny room and one person gets traveler’s diarrhea it can be a real issue – and that’s what happened to us 😬.

One of the other guys in our 4-bed dormitory was up sick all night, and we were all up with him because the bathroom was like 5 feet from our beds and you could hear everything.

If it was dorm-style rooms and dorm-style bathrooms it wouldn’t be an issue because the bathrooms would be outside of the bedroom, but this stranger was basically getting sick in the room we all shared since the bathroom was part of the mixed dorm. The bathrooms being ensuite for the mixed dorms in Selina Atitlan isn’t an issue in the same way because the rooms and the bathrooms are large, but I wouldn’t stay in a 4-bed mixed dorm in Selina Antigua ever again.

Food

The food at Selina isn’t that great but I would recommend the breakfast, it’s usually around 25 – 50 Q ($3-$6).

Stats

Towels Included: No – You need to pay a 50 Q ($6) deposit and you get 30 Q back when you return the towel.
Toiletries Included: Yes
Daily Housekeeping: Yes, but the bathroom didn’t look like it.
Laundry: Yes – 75 Q and ready in 6 hours.
Wifi: Yes – Solid signal, also offers much better wifi through their Coworking program for $15 a day where you also get access to a separate coworking space.
Wifi in Rooms: Yes
Breakfast Included: No – but they offer 25 Q Selina breakfast starting at 7 AM.
Hot Water: Yes
Heat: No
AC: No, we couldn’t even use the fan if the light was turned off because we couldn’t reach the string and had to ask tall people in the hallway to turn it on for us 😂
Access to a Kitchen: Yes
Pool: Yes
Lockers: Yes, but small – I couldn’t fit my camera bag in them.
Luggage Storage: Yes
Clean water: Yes, you have to ask behind the bar.
Restaurant on location: Yes, limited menu & much better for breakfast than dinner.

EVENTS

Selina organizes daily events and tours for the people staying there – While we were there they had bonfire night and karaoke night and it was fun! Selina in Guatemala isn’t considered a “party hostel”.