Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel — Hotel in Asbury Park

My sister and I booked 2 nights at The Berkeley to celebrate my 27th birthday. We would check in on a Monday and check out on Wednesday. We both were going to be working on Monday so we called ahead to see if we could request early check-in and we also wanted to tell them we were celebrating a birthday to see if they do anything special, as hotels normally do (a card, free drink at their bar, etc.) When we called, they said they do not do early check-in and that they don't do anything for birthdays. They informed us that they will be adding a note to our reservation requesting that our room gets cleaned first so that we can have the room to work from. We asked if they have a conference room for guests to access in case we were unable to get inside the room by the time of our meetings and they said that they did have a business room for us to use. We arrived to the Berkeley on Monday around 1:15 for our check-in. They informed us that the room was not ready and had not yet been cleaned. I told them that they requested our room to be cleaned first so we could access it and they said that they do early check-in for a $135 fee. That seemed strange because the person on the phone said they do not do early check-in! No matter, we said no thanks, and asked for their business room so we could log onto our calls. To our surprise, their "business room" is really just an open area with some random chairs located right beside the doors to access the pool area. Not private or quiet at all nor is it suitable for meetings. I thought maybe we misunderstood so I went back to ask if we were in the right location and they said that we in fact were in the right location. We also asked for a luggage cart to which the hotel expects guests to navigate the carts and load and unload them with no assistance. When our room was ready, (around 2:45, our check-in was at 3PM which is stated in our confirmation email, but the front desk kept insisting check-in was at 4PM) we went up to finish our calls. We pushed our luggage cart into the small elevator and down the winding hallways of the 6th floor. We noticed right away that the cleanliness of the room was not on par with our expectations. There was a stain on the duvet cover and hair on the bathroom floor, small rolled up toilet paper pieces on the bathroom floor, and hair in the shower. We went down to the front desk requesting our room to be cleaned again and for a replacement duvet cover. They said "sorry" and said they'd be sending someone up to clean. Several hours went by and we returned to the room to find our door left open with no house keepers in sight. Our bathroom had not been cleaned, the duvet cover had been replaced, but the decorative ottoman had been pulled out (so they could change the duvet) and it was left flipped and pulled out from the bed. The front desk put us on hold and said they would upgrade the room which was nice, but we yet again had to go down get a luggage cart and lug our belongings up to the new room. It would have been nice to get some assistance as it seems like it should be a liability for guests to be pushing the luggage carts through the property. The next morning we left the room around 9AM and saw house keeping was 1 door away from ours so we thought our timing was perfect to get our room serviced. We spent the day out and our room was never serviced. After staying at the Berkeley, I received a survey from their website. I filled it out stressing my concerns on everything that happened and Joseph Harakal, the "Room Division Manager" sent me an email asking to follow up with me. I gave him my cell phone number and he never reached out. I emailed him again stressing my disappointment but that I truly wasn't surprised based on the low-energy of the staff and he never responded. It truly is disappointing to received such low quality in an expensive hotel. It is also shocking that an alleged manager would...

I previously stayed with here from Wednesday 7/14 - Friday 7/16. When arriving they let us know our room was ready early which was great. We asked about where to park since the website said parking was available on property. It’s not, unless you want to spend $65 a day for valet. The website says the EXACT opposite saying self park available, valet not available due to covid. We carried in all of our luggage to arrive in a room that smelled like cigarettes and the bedsheets were still physically wet, not even damp or humid but WET. We went to the desk to the front desk they told us they could move our room, but It wouldn't be ready till 4. It was about 2:30 at this point. So we lugged all of our stuff back to the car, then drove down the street to find parking. Pay for our on street parking only to get a call saying our room was ready 10 minutes later so now we lug our stuff back inside the hotel. The man at the front door was more than nice and probably the only friendly hotel. Younger white man. He greated us as we would say we were back each time. We go to the desk to get our new room. We arrive at our second room, when we walk in there is towels all over the floor and the bed was completely not made. No one ever cleaned this room. So now we go to the front desk for the 3rd time. They give us a third room. The women hands us our keys and tells us she doesn’t want to see us again until we leave. When we arrive at the room everything seems fine. We are exhausted and wasted half of our day lugging our items up and down their hotel. We put our stuff down and check out the room a bit more. I always do a bed bug check. Hair on the sheets doesn’t freak me out because working in the industry i know it’s hard to get it not to cling to sheets. But their was hair on the bed, and i pulled back each sheet all the way to reveal the mattress, which was severely stained. That also didn’t Bother me much because their was a mattress protector atleast over it, but what did bother me was the crumbs all over the mattress under the sheets. It was filled with like large cracker like pieces. Luckily we brought our own blankets and stuff so we barely even used their bed stuff. I put my luggage on the floor and found a previous guests sun screen under the bed. The 2 previous rooms we had before this one each had a fridge. This one had nothing so we had to use our cooler the entire stay. Upon leaving the hotel their was a rude older man working at the front door. He was yelling at me that i need to hurry up with my cart which i had to stand by while my boyfriend had to walk down the block to pick up our car that the hotel made us park at. Another women asked for a cart and I told her she can have mine right after I’m done. The man asked her what room so he could help. She said oh no thank you i just need a cart I don’t need help. He said no this is my job i will help you. She again declined his offer once more and he just became more and more rude forcing his services on her. She took the cart and told the man not to follow. I’ve been in the industry many years and I’ve worked for many hotels and resorts everywhere from Disney, to large waterpark resorts, to your sketchy holiday inns. And man this place was a close ranking to the gross, terrible service holiday inns I have worked in. The fact that I had moved rooms 3 times without an apology or a single person reaching out to ask how my room / stay was going was absolutely insane.

This place has terrible fake advertising with misguided information both on your own website and third party website. Along with terrible service as the staff kept moving us, not apologizing or helping us in any means. You basically stole our money and provided us with a sub par room and...

SPOILER ALERT: Fourth bullet point is probably all you need to know.

I stayed at The Berkeley Hotel from August 15th through the 17th, 2021 and was very disappointed with my experience. I emailed the hotel multiple times and was told my concerns had been forwarded to management, but staff would not give me a name or contact information and eventually ignored my follow-up emails. I have waited months to write this, so as not to be hasty with complaints when perhaps the hotel had every intention of making this right. Nope! So here goes:

-We were charged $90 for valet when there was no valet after noon on weekdays. We self-parked the entire time AND as of our visit, the website read, “Due to COVID-19, the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel is currently offering Self Parking ONLY.”

-COVID-19 was not being taken seriously. We saw three employees wearing masks throughout the duration of our stay and countless others not wearing them, in addition, the majority of the guests not wearing them. There was no distancing happening at any line we stood in; the temperature scanners were present, but facing the wall; there were signs for hand sanitizer dispensers without the actual dispensers present; the lobby bathrooms were filthy and without paper towels; we later saw decals to remind everyone to wear masks, which were laughable at this point; and the pool was absolutely packed on Sunday.

-There was no one checking wristbands at the pool, though an empty “pool check-in” stand was clearly marked at the entrance. An ambulance was called due to alcohol poisoning and I later read in the reviews that this seems to be a common occurrence. On Sunday, aside from being crowded, the pool was cloudy, drunk people were obnoxiously swearing, the music was blasting and it very much felt like pre-COVID spring break. In a word, it felt unsafe. I understand everyone has free will, but the hotel should have at least enforced capacity limits.

-Our room (808) was dirty, with bits of food covered in ants, bobby pins and random hairs throughout. And- brace yourself- there was what appeared to be vomit splash on the back of the bathroom door. There were bits of lettuce or greens in the liquid splashed on the door and wall, and there were different colors of splash around the white mirror frame as well. The shower head was way too low for my 6’3 husband to fit under and the extended shower curtain bar didn’t make sense as it was installed halfway into the shower, making it a tight squeeze for me, a smaller-than-average-sized woman. There was one hook in the entire bathroom, even though there was plenty of wall space for a towel bar. I can’t imagine a family larger than our party of three being able to conveniently use this bathroom.

-Desk staff had no information about the beach, other than to tell us to download the Viply app. She said, “I know it sounds like I’m not from around here, but it’s just that I haven’t been to the beach this year.” The name “oceanfront” is in the hotel. It is a matter of good hospitality to be able to provide guests with all of the information they need to get onto the beach, regardless of whether the employees have been to the beach this year or not. To be able to tell us the basics (that the beach actually doesn’t open to the public until 9am and closes well before sunset, that there is a fee per person per day, which is higher on the weekends, or that an annual pass that can purchased and that children under are free) would have been greatly helpful. A link on the hotel’s website could have simplified this, but there wasn't one at the time of my stay. We would have brought our own beach chairs, for example, had we known the company that rents them on the beach is not out all...