Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara — Hotel in Montecito

This is a copy of an email I sent to the General Manager after our stay last week. It has yet to garner a response:||||Good morning Mr. Ide,||||Rather than write a review on Yelp, I wanted to first give you the courtesy of reaching out directly to you to express my and my wife's extreme displeasure with our recent stay at your hotel in Santa Barbara. The Four Seasons Biltomre always held a special place in our hearts as it goes back to the very beginning of our relationship over 15 years ago and continued through three children all the way up until last week. Unfortunately, I can’t say that we’ll be visiting again. Allow me to explain:||||We booked a three night stay from Tuesday to Friday in hopes of a much needed break from our kids and a highly stressful business we run. Upon arrival, it was clear that times had changed at the hotel, but we aren’t typically the types to complain about minor things such as the lack of being offered a bottle of water at the front desk. It happens. That said, we became increasingly frustrated, and eventually livid, with the lack of service and follow through from your establishment. The primary culprit- the pool area. ||||Now we recognize that midweek in February is not exactly the high point of the season, but that doesn’t excuse a hotel like the Four Seasons from not having an attendant during pool hours, not having towels available at all, nobody to help set up chairs, no drink or food service, and most egregious, no attention paid to the pile up of dirty towels or trash that extended well into the evenings. Sitting in the hot tub on Wednesday morning, we were beside ourselves waiting to see what would happen. We noticed a phone saying that we could dial in-room service to get food at the pool. We called that number and told them there were no towels. Their reply, “That’s the spa’s responsibility". I am not exaggerating when I say that I would have expected better service at a Holiday Inn. Below I’ve attached a couple of photos for reference. ||||Beyond frustrated, we toweled off and walked to the lobby of the hotel, where a clearly rattled employee excused herself after hearing our complaints to go “find a manager”. After having been gone for a good 3 or 4 minutes, she returned only to say that the manager was unavailable and that the Food and Beverage Manager is responsible for pool service. She also told us that the F&B Manager would be in touch in the afternoon to clear the air. As a courtesy, we were offered passes to the beach club across the street but nothing else.||||The kicker to the story is this. Over the next 2 days and up to today, we’ve never heard a peep from the F&B Manager nor anyone from the hotel. ||||For what it’s worth, just one month earlier, we decided to spend one night at the Four Seasons Westlake Village just to relax a bit. During that mini-trip, construction was happening at the hotel. We asked to have our room changed to another wing of the hotel, and within 5 minutes of asking, the front desk girl who checked us in had personally come to our room with a bellhop in tow, moved us across the way with a room upgrade to a suite, and threw in a $100 in-room dining credit for us to enjoy breakfast the following day. And on top of that, she continued checking in with us throughout the stay and even a day or two later just to make sure we felt taken care of. I’d argue that such a level of service is what we are used to getting from a Four Seasons. And in that particular case, the offense was much less egregious than what I described here, yet the follow through was night and day. Needless to say, we plan to return to Westalke Village. I can’t say the same with Santa Barbara. ||||We may not be the type of clientele who is spending $2,500 a night for some fancy suite. True, we only booked a pretty basic room. However, if you have the nerve to charge $600+ a night for your hotel, you really need to be able to deliver, and all evidence seems to be to the contrary. I certainly hope there’s a reason for this lapse in service. However, I’m worried that it’s a defined strategy to cut corners and if that’s the case, I don’t envy your position as a 5 star hotel manager in a part of the world with many options. ||||I write this to you not with my hand out for a make-good of any kind. The truth is that I probably wouldn’t take you up on it anyhow. I just want you to know about the experience we had in hopes that you are able to right the ship before it...

Bella Vista and The Four Seasons Resort Made Our Wedding Very Memorable!

On June 2019, my fiance (now husband) and I arranged our quick wedding ceremony with about 20 people across the street from The Four Seasons Biltmore in front of the beach. Afterwards, we had happy hour at The Tydes Restaurant (owned by The Four Seasons) and then dinner at Bella Vista Restaurant. It was ALL FABULOUS, dreamy and the most memorable day of our lives ! This wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for the fabulous staff at The Four Seasons, Bella Vista Restaurant and The Tydes Restaurant!

We worked with Samantha Staskus (Food & Beverage Supervisor,) Daniel Almada (Restaurant Manager) and Andreza Holt ( Restaurant Manager). They made it very efficient and easy to plan our special day with us...from suggesting the exact spot for the ceremony, to selecting dinner entree choices, to booking a special suite for the honeymoon and even designing the wedding cake which they baked and designed onsite (as they have a pastry chef onsite!) The cake alone was delicious, deluxe, beautifully designed and reasonably priced for 30 servings (we used real 24 gold foil, marbled fondant, edible chocolate shells which they made onsite, as well as real shells for display - see photos!) In addition, The Four Seasons Biltmore offered FREE valet which was available for us and our guests as we had reservations at Bella Vista and we also stayed at the hotel for one night.

They handled everything with class and efficiency! This is why we will be coming back for our 1st year anniversary AND we will continue to recommend this resort to our friends and family for your memorable events!! Thank you, Samantha, Daniel and Andreza, from the bottom of our hearts for your friendliness, talent and most of all, your FANTASTIC concierge service! The food, champagne and the ambiance was top notch! You all are THE BEST in...

Let me start with the positive. The hotel and the grounds are beautiful. We had a very nice room with a fireplace and a view of the ocean (when you could see it).

Unfortunately, there are a few negative things about this hotel as well.

The first thing is that despite the very carefully composed picture on their website, this hotel is NOT on the beach. You need to cross a relatively busy road to get to the beach. Also, the beach itself is about 15-20 feet wide, with no chairs, towels, umbrellas or services. This is not a beach resort.

The second thing is that every day starts and ends with a “The Shining”-like fog that is so thick you can taste and feel it. We were there for 5 days in August. For two of the days, the fog never burned off. For the other three, the fog burned off around 2 or 3 pm, only to return a few hours later. While we were repeatedly told that this was “unusual” weather for August, it lasted all week.

The third thing is the pool setup. There is only a very small and often crowded pool on property. Fortunately, our room came with access to the pool club next door. While this arrangement worked out fine, it just seemed odd to have to go to a separate stand-alone pool club when staying at a Four Seasons hotel. Also, I’m not sure what people without access to that club do.

Finally, there were a few service glitches here and there, like when we checked in at 4 pm, our room wasn’t ready, we were originally double-charged for our massages and the hotel concierge never followed through on some dinner reservations we asked her to help us with, but generally the hotel made good on these mistakes (we received a credit and some drinks for the late check-in and the double-charge was corrected).

Overall,...