Monterey Surf Inn Downtown — Hotel in Monterey

TL;DR - Our first room was a nightmare, which perhaps made the change to another room more palatable, but still not worth the $148 (plus $29 tax) per night.||||We've stayed in Monterey many times before, but we've always seen the long road of inns along Munras Ave and thought "Wouldn't it be quaint to stay at one of those?" So I blindly picked the Monterey Surf Inn. I wish I'd read a few more of the reviews. I hope our experience will at the very least prepare you. It was not the WORST, but I wish we'd been more prepared.||||The first "red flag" was checking in. The main office was an undecorated box of a room with a counter, upon which sat an old phone with the sign, "Use phone for help." I worried whomever was managing the place was off-site, so I picked it up. Immediately a phone on the other side of the counter began to ring. After a moment, a man opened the door behind the counter, wearing an LA Lakers t-shirt. I wondered if he even worked there until he asked what I wanted. I hung up the counter phone and said I was checking in. Giving him my id and credit card, he gave us "Room #2" and said on check out to just leave the card key in the room as there is nothing to charge for incidentals, but there was free coffee as he pointed to a sad looking coffee maker by the front office door. ||||Entering "Room #2" my nose was immediately assaulted by the smell of an old indoor pool. The walls had no art on them. The baseboards looked like they had been part of a hockey rink, scuffed and stained. One baseboard corner was just aluminum foil. The two queen beds had no top sheets, just the white undersheets. No lamps. No phone. Each bed had a light switch in the wall directly over the center of each bed's headboard, which turned on a billion lumen fluorescent canned light over the head of each bed, perfect for interrogating a suspect or deprogramming a cult member. The light also illuminated what others have mentioned in what I've NOW read in previous reviews - hairs on the bedsheets. Tiny black hairs. Either the sheets hadn't been replaced, or they HAD been replaced and the cleaning staff needs to wear hairnets. Or maybe the sheets need a shave. ||||The bathroom can only be described at best as a converted closet. Maybe four feet wide, eight feet long. The canned light in there made the overhead bed lights seem gentle. If florescent lights could give you a sunburn, this one was certainly trying. ||||After talking my wife down from demanding we cut our losses and go to another hotel, I returned to the main office to pick up the phone on the front desk. When the Laker fan returned, I asked if it was possible to get another room and listed our issues. He didn't apologize or make any excuses, but he did offer either the handicapped room or "Room #5, but it wasn't clean yet". I immediately wondered to myself what his definition of clean was, but I said #5 would be great. ||||After seeing Room #2, Room #5 was markedly better, but I do wonder if we only had that perspective from being in Room #2 first. This room had two framed prints on the walls above the beds, and the beds had nice quilted top sheets and decorative pillows. The baseboards were clean. The room still smelled of old YMCA indoor pool. But it was better than #2. Unfortunately there were still issues - upon using the shower the next day we discovered there is no shelf in the shower for soap or other toiletries. While I commend Monterey Surf Inn on their commitment to saving water in California's drought, the shower head dribbled like tiny watering can. The water was warm, I will give them that. The sink located outside the toilet/shower closet (which you have to walk sideways to get to between the wall of the bathroom and the bed) at one point had a towel rack that lost the crossbar, but the inventive staff managed to simply turn the two joints attached to wall upward into "towel hooks". ||||Overall... considering the other hotels around it and their nightly rates, Monterey Surf Inn seems a little steep for their "no frills" approach. Perhaps the other rooms were even more well appointed, but if you go don't settle for "Room #2", unless you're deprogramming a...

DO NOT STAY HERE, Horrible hotel!!! DIRTY ROOM WALLS HAIR IN BED STAINED BEDSHEETS HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE

I decided to take my girlfriend away for the weekend to Monterey for her birthday and while I was looking online I found this place and saw it had a good location and was reasonably priced so I booked it. As soon as we got there I was disappointed because it looked nothing like the pictures but we were already there so I checked us in. As soon as I opened the hotel door I smelled nothing but cleaning products. The whole room smelled like it had been saturated in heavy cleaning solutions so bad it was giving us a headache, yet somehow still had dirty walls and a old looking bathroom. My girlfriend and I decided we would try to air the room out by leaving the window open for an hour or two while we go sight see hoping that would help so we could rough it out. we leave and come back a few hours later and the smell is still there. I call management to see if we can exchange rooms and he tells me that every room is booked already and I can't have another room, the best he could do is offer me an air freshener. I told him that's not acceptable so he tells me he going to call the owner to see if there's anything the owner can do and call me right back. 30 minutes later I still haven't heard back so I call again and he says the only thing the owner can do is exchange my room first thing in the morning but not that night. Now mind you by this time my girlfriend has already noticed a stain on the top bedsheet which is why she inspected the rest of the bed only to find someone else HAIR in it, so needless to say we are already done with this room by then so I told the manager we weren't staying the night there and requested my money back. the manager says he's not able to refund me my money and that I would have to wait for the owner who was on his way there to the hotel in the next 30 minutes to an hour. I wait for the owner for another 30 minutes just for him to tell me, now that I want a refund, that he can switch the rooms for me. By this time, I was done with the hotel and declined switching rooms and asked for my refund. He tells me that he can only refund half of my two-night stay because I "used the room" because I didn't request a refund as soon as I checked in and he would have to have housekeeping "clean the room". This was the most frustrating, unprofessional, and dirty hotel I have...

This motel has been nicely renovated and they are about to re-do the swimming pool this winter. The location is great, right across from the Del Monte shopping center and the small Dahvee Park where you can have a pleasant wooded walk, and minutes from everywhere you want to go in the Monterey/Carmel area. There are many motels on Munras Ave. (and I have stayed in most of them) but what makes this one better than the others is the NEWLY renovated rooms with a large wall-mounted flat screen TV, good beds and bedding, laminate wood floors, stone-tiled bathrooms, and attractive outdoor seating areas. There is a good size fridge and microwave in each room and the Ninja coffee machine in the reception area allows you to brew the BEST cup of coffee every morning, noon and night, far superior to the in-room coffee makers offered in other motels. But what really sets this one far above the long line of motels on Munras Ave. is Mike, the front desk manager, who REALLY KNOWS HOSPITALITY! Trust me, the front desk people at the motels on Munras Ave. do not know their business. Mike is a professional (I wonder if he went to the Cornell Hotel school) and he really knows how to treat customers in a friendly, polite, informative, courteous, helpful and positive way. He is the best manager I have met on Munras Ave. (and I have met most of them) and he, along with the renovations, make this my NUMBER ONE CHOICE...