Sometimes the more important thing about where you are staying is the people who work there and the people who stay there..........and both are great here! I have stayed in many hostels in Europe but this is the first hostel in Canada for me. If you are looking to meet lots of good Aussie and European friends then this is the place to be in Banff. It seemed clean to me there and all of the staff were friendly. Are the beds comfortable........well are they comfortable at any hostel? This hostel is nice and close to downtown and has a small but cheap and fun pub there.

I stayed at Samesun in Banff for 4 nights.
I stayed before in Samesun in Vancouver and Kelowna but they are all pretty different.

I booked a 6 female dorm, which was very nice because the room are big, furnished (TV, fire place etc) and not full so the night were quite peacefull.
At the beginning I was afraid to have a room close from the beaver (the bar) but you don't hear anything so that's good as well.

However, the "average" grade is motivated by all the rest :

- The kitchen is not even small but tiny.. For an hostel like that even my kitchen is more convient ! No space to cook, no enough space to seat, very hot, no plate (only small ones!) and you have to give your key to get pots and pans (that you have to clean yourself because usually they are still greasy from the last uses).

- The "free breakfast" is a joke compare to (for example) Samesun Vancouver : You have just pancake paste to make for yourself (put water into some kind of flour), you have to fight with the other to have enough space for making a pancake and if you arrive after 9am there is no toast or anything left (breakfast is supposed to be till 10..). No fruit. Deceiving

- Basically, it could be more clean and the staff a little bit nicer (some of them were nearly rude)

So, it's ok for a few nights but i heard HI is nicer so I guess next time I'll check HI..
Ps : Banff and Lake Louise are wonderful anyway!

I stayed in this hostel for a couple of nights on my own and met so many great people there that I really regretted to leave the hostel.

I stayed in a six-bed-dorm and every room has got its own bathroom with shower. The rooms might not be the cleanliest, especially the bathroom was quite dirty, but except for that the rooms are nice.

Downstairs is a small cheap bar that is great for meeting other travelling people. Every day there is a special price for a certain dinner (6 Dollars for a not to small portion) and a special price for a certain drink for the ladies.
This bar is kind of the common room, I mean there is one also on the first floor, but that one is definitely too small for so many people .
The hostel has got Wifi, but that didn't work properly and when it did it was quite slow. The best thing to do is to go to a nearby coffeeshop and use theirs.

The kitchen is really small, especially for so many people and when I stayed there, it was kind of a sauna as well. We had 30°C outside and due to a bad air conditioning system it had pretty much the same temperature inside the kitchen.
The breakfast is included, but make sure you don't get up too late, because the kitchen is just too crowded around half past nine and you might not even get a place to sit down.

As bad as this all sounds the Samesun is definitely a nice place to go back to (as I did a few nights later) and I can really recommend this hostel for young people who look for a place to meet other travellers and enjoy some beers at night.

We stayed here for 2 days I would highley recommend Banff and this hostel to anyone was a great place to stay and the staff were great.Only one problem was the hostel has no Aircon like most of the hotels and hostels in Banff and while we were there it was very hot so bad our first night that we could not sleep so we asked to change rooms for our second night and we found it a bit better on the second floor. All in all good hostel good location and amazing staff.