Noyo Harbor Inn — Hotel in Fort Bragg

Stopped in for a bite to eat and thought we had lucked out as the place was empty except for one other family of 4 (that was finishing up as we sat down) and two women having drinks (they were done and gone ~45 minutes after we sat down), all of us seated outside overlooking the harbor.

Our party of 7 was sat and then left with no update about anything other than we were there at the tale-end of happy hour (we were sat at ~1645 -- which I verified via the timestamps on the photos I took while sitting there waiting and conversing at the table). We sat for another 10-15 minutes with no questions about what we wanted/needed, so I proceeded to go inside and ask for water. I had to give this information to a completely different server and a busser who quickly brought us out some water (I couldn't find our server).

Our original server finally appeared a few minutes later and I noticed as she came out of the door she had a tray full of waters, again, a few minutes after I had already given a solid 10-15 minutes since last seeing her before going in and asking. I watched as she saw we already had waters, caught herself mid-step, sat down the tray, and came over to us to ask if we needed anything. We placed drink and appetizer orders.

Our drinks came out extremely quick, within 2 minutes, with our appetizers shortly thereafter. When setting this all down, our server mentioned there was an error made when she put in our orders (she put in the wrong item, resulting in us being short a flatbread) and that she had to go back in, re-place the order, and bring out the correct item. Not a problem, or so we thought. But more on that later.

It is now 1720 and we are on our first round and appetizers, still no sight of that 2nd flatbread...nor our server.

It is now 1735 (again, verified via the timestamps on my photos) and still no sight of our server.

We finally see her and place our entree and 2nd drink order at 1738. We get this leg of the order at 1747.

I'll pause here; why didn't she hand us off to the other server after happy hour ended? This is serving 101. It was also mentioned at the end of our meal (by us to our busser) that all she had to do was cash us out at that point in the meal, then hand us off to the other server if our initial server was also running the bar.

But, this didn't happen.

Our food finally showed up at 1755 and when this all happened 3 of us placed a 3rd drink order and reminded them about the flatbread that was never initially brought. Our server quickly ran in and returned with it, much to the children's delight (our group was 3 kids; 8 and two 12 year olds, and 4 adults...this wasn't a large group of rowdy drunken adults, we were there as a laid back family dinner)

That flatbread run was the last time we saw our server. Everything after that was handled by the busser. We informed him around 1830 that we have placed a 3rd drink order. He offered to go check on it, but we told him to forget it, just bring the check.

He returned with it (the check) at 1835 and informed us that the server had applied a gratuity. This heads-up was much appreciated as nowhere was this shown, listed, mentioned, or anything of the sorts. My wife stopped the young man, reached into her purse, and gave him a $20 bill while I signed for the meal; leaving no additional tip for the server. I also just checked the website and menu found therein; no mention of gratuity.

Bottom line; for half of our time at Noyo we were the only table sitting outside and the busser was the sole person poking his head out to check on us on a regular basis. Otherwise, I was doing the running.

This place having the stellar reviews that it does has me scratching my head that we had the experience that we did. I'm not one to leave one or two star reviews for establishments, but I felt like I had to given how comically terrible our experience was with (at least the restaurant portion of) the...

We have definitely experienced better. This location needs some staff restructuring; lacking efficiency and customer service.

We reserved a specific room at this location, about 3 weeks in advance. We never received any phone calls from the Inn regarding our reservation, leading us to believe everything was going to be fine.

We arrived Friday afternoon, of the weekend we would be staying and were led in to a room that we did not book, and told that this room was right above the kitchen and we would definitely hear their staff. We advised the front desk associate that wasn't the room we reserved online. The front desk attendant then said, "oh that's weird, we should get to the bottom of that." She then said, "Let me show you this other room, just in case." She led us to another room, again, not the room that we reserved. Back in the lobby, she is looking over the paperwork, confirms that we booked the room we remembered and stated that one of the other staff associates had moved our reservation to another room because our original room reservation had a sofa bed and they wanted to accommodate a party of 4 and gave them our room. Like I said before, no one from this establishment even called to see if that was something we would agree to. Not to mention, there was at least a $40 room cost difference from what we booked to what they moved us to, and according to the invoice they didn't even change the prices to attempt to make it right. I asked the front desk associate, who booked their room first, she replied that we had. She told us she would have to do some moving around, and make some phone calls to get us back in to the room we originally booked. While that sounds fairly simple, we waited about a half hour for her to make changes and phone calls - for a room that we booked first. It was an incredibly off-putting and frustrating experience. Once she finished, she took us to the correct room, and offered free breakfast for the inconvenience. She asked that when we came back downstairs, that we come back to the front desk, to sign new paperwork for the correct room we would be staying in. We came down about 10 mins after that, she was texting or gaming on her cell phone, and told us that she didn't have the paperwork ready for us. Our 2nd trip down to the lobby, as we were getting ready to explore for the day, she had the paperwork ready. That seemed very inefficient.

The room was beautiful and just as I remembered in the pictures, from when I booked it. The bed was really comfortable, the bathroom with the giant soaking tub and dual shower heads was a dream! There is an AC control in the room, however, they don't tell you it doesn't work. The windows do open, and if left open, will eventually cool down the room nicely, I mean - you are on the coast. The fire place was very nice, but it heats that little room up really fast!!! The walls are fairly thin, so you do hear a lot of what is happening in the Inn, as well as, our room windows faced the dining patio, which led to additional noise in our room (due to keeping the room cool with the windows open).

My spouse did go down to have breakfast, as they were comping the meal. According to him, the coffee was pretty good; however, the rest needed work. He ordered a waffle, it was pretty basic. The syrup they brought him was cold. They didn't offer to refill his drink until he was leaving.

The Inn is very nice and spared no expense with their re-modeling. They could benefit from additional training in every aspect of their operations. I do not think we would stay here again, we have had better experiences at other locations in Fort Bragg, as we...

I normally only stay in four or five star hotels, but this hotel receives such rave reviews that I thought I would give it a shot. I sent a few emails in regards to questions that I had. The emails were not responded to. I sent the emails to both the manager, Scott Schneider, and the general information desk. My associate also tried reaching out the same method and never received a reply. When I called, I spoke to someone who was very rude and abrasive towards me. She treated me as if I was wasting her time asking questions about the hotel, the restaurant, and what amenities were nearby. I requested to speak to someone else, and she said that I was stuck talking to her so too bad. At this point, I requested to speak to the manager, and she said that he is gone all week. I told her my company is on the search for somewhere to hold our next annual Summit/Retreat and I would love to speak with her manager if possible. She said he’s gone and she has no idea when he’ll be back. I asked if there is someone else I could talk to you and she said Scott is the only manager. At this point, I ended the phone call deciding to call later and hopefully speak to someone else. When I called back, it was the same woman whose name I am choosing not to release at this point and she told me that guests are not to call more than once before their stay. I stated if it’s going to continue like this conversationally, then I have no desire in staying at your establishment or discussing with your manager, the possibility of holding a company retreat there. Less than a week had gone by since I made the booking. She said I was not allowed to cancel without paying a property fee of $40 to cancel. She said you cannot just cancel a booking at our hotel. If you want to cancel, you have to pay me. The booking that I had made was not for another month. Not only did this give me a horrible impression of what this establishment must be like. It also made me never want to visit Fort Bragg for fear that others would have personalities similar to this woman that I spoke to. The hotels I have stayed at in the past may have been far more pricier due to their higher ratings, but the customer service is always exceptional. I have never ever ever received such poor customer service to the point where I have to cancel a reservation due to feeling threatened. It is disappointing when I am trying to offer a business opportunity and stay at a hotel to explore investments that may be able to be made but cannot due to the audacity of not one, but two conversations with a staff...