Lighthouse View Oceanfront Lodging — Hotel in Hatteras Island

Been coming to the Outer Banks almost every year since 1988, I was married in Manteo in 1999 and my daughter being married in 2020 with my grandchildren being babtized in the Atlantic Ocean, I have stayed from Kitty Hawk to the campgrounds in Hatteras been on many trips to Ocracoke and Portsmouth Island. I have stayed in the McMansions to the old time wooden houses with the old Nags Head look through many vacation realtors and hotels and motels. I have seen the entire process up close to the beach nourishment process many times. When I booked here I asked many questions and closer we came to our check in time I even called multiple times with questions especially about beach access, I was informed it was a easy access for older people and dogs, lol that is not the truth! There is no beach access unless you have 20 year old knees. So every day it was a job to pack us all up to go to a beach access about a 20 min drive depending on traffic, my dogs stayed with me every minute of the day accept 2 hours to meet up with my entire family to eat dinner, my dogs are 2 14 year old shih tzus one with a collapsing trachea and the other with a seizure disorder, we was back at the motel by 10 pm and I received a text my dog barked. Another customer informed us the lady staying next to us was living in one of the rooms for work purposes complained about my dogs. I paid extra to have my dogs with me and they was well behaved, I never had a hotel motel complain or even when I boarded them for a few days at Ocean sands dog resort in kill devil hills the owner said my dogs was very well behaved dogs. Maybe if someone is living at a tourist motel maybe she should not be in a dog friendly Room. The room was old needed a lot of work , could not use the fridge fully the door is up against a wall so the door only opens so far, the bed linen looked to be from the 70’s and the torment of fighting ants for a week was awful. When I arrived I complained about the beach access the staff acted like they had no clue there motel was falling in the ocean and I was lieing when I said no beach access existed they even had to go look for themselves and I even asked one of the ladies to demonstrate how she gets to the beach, no one wanted to show me lol. The lady offered to help me look for another motel or a extra day I took the extra day but still left on the day I was to check out. I had enough. This by far was a extremely worst vacation. The reason I go to beach is for the walks on the beach and the sunrises and sunsets and to swim all those was not available at this location. I read the beach nourishment I was moved from 2027 to 2026, it will be only a matter of time and the Atlantic will take back what is hers. I honestly don’t think some of the houses will survive hurricane Erin with a storm surge. It is hanging on with a thread, and I would not let my kids or grandchildren or any young child play on those huge sandbags one shift of a bag can kill a child and that was I was told by the employees was the only access if you wanted to climb on those bags. They are slippery and...

We had a truly wonderful visit to the Lighthouse View Oceanfront Motel! We spent seven nights there with our 6yo and 2yo in a poolside doubles room. Check-in was extremely easy, especially with their app which included our room code and loads of information about the hotel. The room was more than adequate and what we expected based on the photos. We chose a top floor room, which gave us lovely sunset views and quick access to the parking lot and pool. In retrospect, I would have loved to have an oceanside room, and gotten one of the larger suites/efficiencies, but we were late to the game in booking and on a limited budget. The beds were fine, and the fridge was larger than expected and actually stayed quite cold - I'm used to those mini-fridges barely cooling anything, but not this one! The microwave was small but more than enough for what we needed. There were plenty of channels on the television for our little ones and the wifi worked great. For all the time we were there, we never heard a peep from our neighbors next door or below and hopefully we weren't too disruptive to them.

Being on the beach was quite nice, though it's not the kind of beach that young kids can swim at. The waves and current were always too strong and we lost a shovel and a bucket on the very first day. Not the end of the world, but told us that we wouldn't be spending a lot of time there. I did go out at night and relax a bit to the waves, but there are a lot of kids and teens ghost crabbing with their cell phone lights. It made it a bit less pleasurable, but that's not the hotel's fault - what can you do, kids enjoy it! The pool was awesome! We have a toddler that doesn't do well in super cold water, so the bath water-warm pool worked out really well. It was only crowded a handful of times, but it's mostly other kids or parents that didn't mind the splashing and jumping. The hot tub was SUPER hot though. Perfect for my sore neck!

Again, the app was wonderful to use, but we made one mistake. In my own ignorance, I did not understand that "laundry exchange" was for the bed linens and towels and the first few days, the housekeeper left fresh towels out front for us and took our soiled ones. We discovered later on that wasn't the norm (though we left a nice tip because it was really helpful with little kids and limited laundry exchange hours). The literal only complaint that I have is they only have two washing machines and very limited hours (3pm-9pm Sun-Fri). On two occasions, there was a line of folks and, if you didn't get your wash in by 7:30, you weren't finishing up by 9. I wish the hours were extended or there were more machines, but there's also limited space. An actual laundry service might have been worthwhile for a fee.

Overall, this was a terrific visit and we had a great time! We highly recommend the Lighthouse View and met multiple families who have been visiting for years. Don't miss out...

Let me start off by saying this was our second year staying here. Last year our room was impeccably clean and organized, which is VERY important to us since we have a 2 year old (last year she was 1) who likes to run around and touch everything.

Unfortunately, this year our experience was quite the opposite. Our room was filthy when we arrived. There were crumbs all over the kitchen table, chairs, and countertops, along with some sticky dried-on food in some places that required a good bit of scrubbing to remove.

The refrigerator shelves were also splattered with some kind of dried-on sticky substance from the occupant before us. I was able to clean them with a good bit of scrubbing and good old-fashioned elbow grease.

Only one bed was made. The other beds just had the comforter pulled up with sheets at the end of the bed. We made them up ourselves. One set of sheets had some pretty disgusting stains as well.

The afore mentioned issues were frustrating, for sure, but that wasn't the worst part. There was poop underneath the toilet seat and along the rim of the toilet. It looked like someone before us had some pretty gnarly diarrhea. Thankfully, I saw this and was able to clean it properly BEFORE my potty-training 2 year old got into it.

When we brought these issues to the attention of the office staff, the response we got was pretty dismissive and basically "ok, I'll be sure and let the cleaning staff know" but it seemed that the lady was just annoyed that we even said anything. There was not really any attempt to make it right by offering us a discounted rate or coupon towards our next stay or anything like that.

Now, to be clear, we were not looking for any sort of "hand-out", but we do believe that good customer service is part of good business practices. And, given the situation, we feel that some sort of attempt to rectify the situation should have been made by the office staff.

After all, we drove 9 hours to go on vacation, and, unfortunately, I spent the first few hours of our vacation giving the place a good cleaning. Who wants to spent their vacation cleaning up the mess and poop of the previous occupant?! Not me.

Therefore, after this past experience staying there and how the office staff handled the whole situation, I do not think our family will stay there again. We love the OBX, so we will definitely be back for another visit. Unfortunately, we will be finding other accommodations next time.

All things considered, we are quite disappointed with our stay this year, especially since our previous stay (last year) was such a...