Beach Club Hotel — Hotel in Ocean City

My husband’s family have been coming to Ocean City since the 1960s, before the Beach Club hotel opened. Since the hotel has opened its doors, it has been the number one choice in hotels to stay at every time they have visited. We continued to stay at the Beach Club and usually had a pretty good experience, except for this last visit. ||||We booked a week stay during the family week promotion in July for three adults (Myself, my husband and my mother in law) and one child. At the time of our stay, I was midway through my pregnancy, so we requested a room on the bottom floor. We were assigned room 105 which is directly across from the garage/patio entrance where the smoking section is. It is also right beside the elevator which gets very noisy. ||As soon as we entered the room, we noticed it was musty and odd smelling with a dehumidifier running on the corner of the room. I don’t think it was working very well and the air in the room was damp and heavy. We figured we could try and deal with the room as is since we got in late and just wanted to go to sleep. ||The next day (on a Monday) I woke up feeling so sick and could barely get out of bed. I thought it might be my body acting up due to being pregnant and through nothing else of it. For the whole day that Monday I stayed in the room trying to feel better. I’ve never been this sick before in my pregnancy and couldn’t understand why nothing was working. I felt slightly better when I sat out on the patio, but the afternoon soon was so intense it was hard to do anything other than sit with your eyes closed out there. I also went out to the boardwalk to get lunch and started to feel better just by being out of the room. I took my lunch back to the room and sat on the balcony to eat. Since I was starting to feel much better, I went back into the room to watch TV and wait for my family to come back from the beach. About 20 minutes later I again started feeling sick. I was nauseous and had a killer headache. I couldn’t understand why so I just laid back down on the bed and tried to take a nap. That night, going back onto the boardwalk for dinner, I started feeling better, but as soon as we came back to the room, I again was sick. ||||The next day (Tuesday) wasn’t much better, but I was determined to work through my sickness to enjoy our stay. Again, just figuring it was pregnancy related and I could just get through it. Until my son and husband started to complain about feeling sick as well. Around 4:00 that day, we were in the room trying to just relax when we got a call from the front desk. The front desk manager was on the phone and the first thing she said was “We’ve had numerous complaints about a marijuana smell coming from your room. I would just like to remind you that smoking in the hotel is against policy.” I was shocked and informed her that we do not use drugs of any kind, I was pregnant and had a small child with us. I think there was a mistake, and they called the wrong room. She then verified my name and hotel room number (105) and said “no mistake. It’s coming from your room” and then reminded me again its against their policy. I politely informed her that my husband and I both have federal jobs that we could use if we are caught with drugs, so we do not use any sort of drug. Her response was “It’s legal in New Jersey” before getting off the phone. ||||After that conversation, my husband and I quickly realized that the weird smell that’s been in our room and possibly the reason I’ve been so sick is someone has been smoking marijuana in the garage which is 5 steps outside our hotel door, and it’s been drifting into our room. We even opened our door and walked out to the garage to verify it was the strongest smelling there. ||||I went up to the front desk and explained what had been going on with our sickness, the smells, and what we found out about where the marijuana smell was coming from. I then asked if there was another room that we could possibly move to since this specific room seems to be making us sick. The man at the front desk was so sweet and helpful and told me he knew exactly what area I was talking about, and that people smoke weed there all the time as he used to work maintenance until this season. He spoke to the front desk manager (who was different that the lady I just talked to) and they would give me a call back in 10 minutes in my room.||||20 minutes later we received that call and were told they could move us rooms for two nights then we’d have to move back to 105. I said I appreciated that they could move us for two nights, we still had five nights of our stay left and don’t feel comfortable in this room anymore. I was basically told take it or leave it they wont be doing anything else. At that point I just wanted to leave so I asked if they would just cancel out reservation and refund our remaining days. I was told they had to call the manager, but she didn’t think that would happen. ||Again, 20 minutes later I received a call that my reservation was cancelled, and the amount left was being refunded. Luckily the Tahiti Motel had rooms available for us to move to. We packed up in under an hour and was gone.||||My husband went back the next day to return the breakfast vouchers that we forgot to return before we left. As he walked in the lobby, the front desk clerk and the manager were talking loudly about us and how they couldn’t believe how just left the hotel. They stopped talking when my husband interrupted them to say that his was one of the ones in the party they were gossiping about. He retuned the meal vouchers that I forgot to give the night before and asked to just talk to the manager about what happened. ||||The manager, Karen, was very confrontational and immediately said there was nothing more she could do for us. My husband asked if she could sit down and explain the refund because he didn’t thing we got the full amount refunded that was told to us. Karen said we probably owned the hotel money and was over refunded, but she would look. Turns out they owed us another $100. After that, my husband asked if next time this happens if they could handle it in a more professional manner than just calling and accusing someone without investigating. Karen responded that she did investigate. Her explanation was “The smell was strongest outside your door (105) and room 106. We knocked on 106 and a man in a towel came to the door so it couldn’t be him and no one was in the smoking area so it had to be your room.”||Having been in customer service ourselves before, we were shocked at how a manager of a hotel was handling the situation. We just decided to cut our losses at this point and enjoy the rest of our vacation at the Tahiti, which Karen made sure to mention was a huge step down from the Beach Club. Ironically enough, a couple hours after we arrived at the Tahiti we all felt much better. No one in our traveling party felt sick...

May 2014 marked 5 years cancer free for me. My husband and I decided we wanted to celebrate by taking our then-6 year old son away, somewhere we had never been. We settled on Ocean City and decided the Beach Club looked nice, so we booked for the following month. We absolutely fell in love, especially me! It was just the relaxed vibe we enjoy, we loved the proximity to everything, it was clean, and we especially loved the hotel restaurant where we could sit outside and appreciate the ocean view while we dined. I began to refer to it as my new "happy place". Fast forward a year to 2015, my husband was a week away from turning 40 and we had no plans. He came home from work one day and suggested we try and get a room at the Beach Club again for the following weekend. Somehow we lucked out because someone had just canceled their room and we got it! We had another wonderful experience - it was on this trip that we decided to make it an annual vacation, so we decided to book our 2016 room early to get the ocean view room. When I called, the manager informed me that if we arrived on a Sunday or Monday and stayed 3 nights, the 4th night would be free! I was thrilled to hear this, as if I didn't already love this hotel enough. So I revolved the entire trip plans around that special, and I received a receipt via email stating I had put $519 down and would owe $634.48 upon arrival. I started telling everyone I knew about this awesome deal (though I had been gushing to people about the hotel for over a year at this point) in hopes of going down with a group this year, as it's my turn to be turning 40. Five months after booking the room, I randomly received a receipt in the mail stating that I owed $1031.08. When I called to say must have been some kind of mistake, the manager explained that they were no longer offering the deal for the free night. I argued that since I had in in writing, it should be honored, but she disagreed. I got off the phone and was very upset, so my husband called back and had words with her. She stayed firm that they would not honor the deal they had already sold us and that we had based our entire trip around, even though we had it in writing. We then contacted a family friend who is a real estate attorney and he confirmed they were legally bound to honor the contract. When my husband called the hotel back to inform them of this, they finally decided to do the right thing and honor the offer. They also informed us we would be BANNED FROM EVER STAYING THERE AGAIN, after this trip. Banned simply because we asked them to honor their contract with us. Banned from my happy place. Before this happened, I would have given it 5 stars. I know this is a contradictory review because I love (loved?) this hotel, but I despise the way we are being treated. Needless to say we canceled the trip after all, we don't want to give them any more of our money after they have behaved so unreasonably. And we don't want to go there with the thought that it will be the last time we'll be "allowed" on the property. So we're going to go somewhere else. I'm guessing this was what they were hoping would happen, but I'm still extremely sad and disappointed about the...

Not a bad stay. If you're a smoker don't bother. You can't smoke on the balcony of the hotel which I have never experienced. There's one table attached to the garage which is the "smoking section." I didn't bother with that as I was with my daughter anyway.

Location is pretty good. It's on 13th street so if you have kids you still have to walk/drive down to 8th street for the kid friendly activities.

Speaking of the parking. The parking lot is VERY tight and small and many times there are poles that take up free parking spots.

The beds do not have comforters. There is a thin blanket in between 2 sheets 😑😐 but the beds are comfortable. AC unit in the room which was great.

I was disappointed that there wasn't a microwave in the room. Only a small fridge. My daughter has a lot of food allergies so I brought her own food thinking I could just heat it up in the microwave but unfortunately there wasn't one.

Location is great. Right on the boardwalk. The pool is great. I wanted a view of the beach. At other hotels the sliding doors opened up to the beach. This one opened up to other buildings and the beach was on our left which was semi okay but not ideal. Beach view wasn't available when I booked the hotel. Wanted to try the restaurant but didn't have time although it looked great and has really good reviews. Overall personally I'd give it a 4 out of 10. Next time we will be going to Wildwood. At the hotel where I usually go to there, it has a little kitchen area with a microwave, fridge and everything you need and beach views.

P.s. The shower water pressure was...