Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa — Hotel in San Diego

We recently stayed at this hotel, and while it has some appealing features, the overall experience was frustrating due to poor service and lack of transparency.|| The Good:||The hotel itself is visually appealing—modern, clean, and surrounded by spacious grounds that are pleasant to walk around. There’s a pool, a couple of onsite restaurants, and a small shop. We booked through the Chase Luxury Hotel & Resort Collection (part of the Chase Sapphire program), which included a few perks: breakfast for two (up to $60 total), a $100 hotel credit, potential room upgrade and early checkin/late checkout if available, and a welcome gift (which turned out to be two chocolates).||The food at both the restaurant and through room service was decent—better than average overall. While the prices felt a bit steep (especially with hidden service charges tacked on), the quality and flavor were solid. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but definitely a step above typical hotel fare.|| The Frustrating:||Room Service Fees:|Watch out if you order room service. A 22% service charge is automatically added, plus an additional 5% fee on some food items. None of this was clearly disclosed upfront, which left a bad impression and made a simple order feel overpriced and sneaky.||Parking Confusion & Surprise Fee:|Upon arrival, we struggled to locate the parking lot. The map provided was unclear, and we ended up driving out to the main road. Eventually, we returned to the lobby, where the valet attendant asked if we were given a parking placard—something that hadn’t been mentioned at checkin. He acted mildly inconvenienced, saying he'd grab one from the front desk. Once we had it, we learned that the parking entrance was to the left before exiting the property—again, something that could have been mentioned earlier.|Even worse, there was no mention of a parking fee on the hotel’s website when booking—something I checked carefully to avoid surprise charges. Yet when we checked out, we were hit with a $45 per night parking fee—even with the placard. This lack of transparency felt like a bait and switch.||Pool Area:||The pool was underwhelming. During the day, it was packed with partygoers, families, and guests eating full meals poolside. We waited until closer to sunset when it was quieter, but even then, the hot tub was tiny and overcrowded with a group having a small party.||Restaurant Disaster: Greenfinch||This was the most disappointing part of our stay. We arrived at Greenfinch for breakfast around 8:30 AM and were met with a confusing and disorganized scene. There was a line both inside and outside, even though the dining area was only about 20% occupied.||The host told us the kitchen was running behind. I asked if we could at least sit down and start with a coffee, but he told us to go next door and buy it ourselves. We waited for over 30 minutes, watching visibly frustrated guests. A woman even asked why the restaurant was mostly empty if people had been waiting so long. One family with three kids gave up and left. Meanwhile, we saw others—some with children, some couples—walk up and get seated immediately.||When I finally asked the host why new arrivals were being seated while we were still waiting, he suddenly said, “Oh, I can get you a table now.” At that point, it wasn’t about getting a table anymore—it was about how poorly the whole thing was handled. I asked to speak with a manager. She seemed confused and had no clear system for tracking or notifying guests when tables were ready. No apology, no explanation, no gesture of goodwill—not even complementary coffee.||We eventually decided to stay and were seated. After we placed our order, a random staff member brought our food—he didn’t smile, make eye contact, or say a single word. It felt impersonal and robotic.||The bright spot in the entire experience was our waitress, Karina. She was kind, attentive, and clearly experienced with kids. She placed our coffee at the far end of the table (away from our toddler’s reach) and later returned with a stuffed kitty that she had personally purchased from the shop next door. That small act completely changed the tone of our morning. Our daughter carried that little kitty around all day, and still plays with it at home.||Karina was the only one who truly made us feel welcome. The rest of the staff seemed indifferent at best. A big thanks to her for salvaging what could’ve been a completely negative experience.||Checkout & Final Thoughts:||We had planned to check out after breakfast, but due to the delay at the restaurant, I had to text the front desk for a late checkout. Fortunately, they granted it without issue.||In summary, this hotel has a nice setting and some upscale touches, but service and communication need serious improvement. Between the unexpected parking fees, the frustrating restaurant experience, and the lack of basic hospitality from staff, I can’t say I’d return. As the saying goes, “You get what you pay for”—but in this case, I paid for a premium stay and got...

Stayed here for a week in late July with my husband and our dog for a conference. Overall everything worked but wasn't 5 star or price worthy. The short of it is the way they bill is strange, conference food is subpar, rooms not ready at check in, seemed unprepared to have a large group, and no fenced in dog area for dogs to run off leash. The good is the massage and spa where on par with Disney World Grand Floridian experience, the valet and bell hops where extremely helpful, it's dog friendly, and the grounds were beautiful.

Now the long version. Upon check in many in our group didn't have rooms available. I would understand if we were all checking in early but we were not. Most did not get their rooms until after 5pm. They did let us bag check and hang out at the pool/grounds while we waited.

The grounds and gardens of the hotel were nice and beautiful. The walking paths and dog areas where lovely although a fenced in, off leash area is missing for dogs, which is odd for such a dog friendly hotel.

Our specific room was situated quite far from the conference rooms which limited my ability to go back to the room on my breaks. Otherwise the rooms where as expected. Everything worked and was comfortable.

The hotel provided all meals for the conference. Breakfast was varied and delicious. Lunch and dinner became very repetitive. It's unclear if this was an issue with the conference simply picking poorly or limited options presented. Many people from the conference stopped eating lunch or dinner at the hotel by the end of the week due to the lack of seasonings and repetitive nature of the meals.

The very strange thing at this hotel is how they do their billing. At every other hotel I've ever stayed at there are upfront charges for the room, a hold for incidentals, and sometimes a hold for room charges. Then at the the end of your stay you settle up by getting charged the correct amount.

Instead of doing this the Estancia puts a new hold on your card every single day for the amount you spent the day before plus your room cost, on top of an incidental hold that was put on up front. Then at the end of your stay you can decide if you want to use the card they put the multiple holds on or a different card. I have never stayed anywhere that does this. It was very confusing as some days I had extra charges to the room or spa. It made it difficult to see if I was being charged the correct amount. This strange way of holds each single day was not explained to us at check in.

To further add to the confusion our group was supposed to have a predetermined discounted incidental, resort fees, and parking charges on our personal credit cards while the room costs where paid for by our conference organizers. Instead of charging us the predetermined discounted fees upfront the Estancia put holds on many peoples personal cards for their rooms and non-discounted fees daily instead of a single charge. By the time some people in our group noticed this error there were hundreds of dollars of holds on personal credit cards when they were only expecting a hundred dollar hold. It caused alot of issues for many people at the conference.

When I inquired about the weird daily charging instead of an upfront flat fee they said it was industry standard to put holds on cards daily for the room cost plus the day priors expanses. This isn't true. I was a travel nurse for six months, and am currently a nomad since May. I've stayed in hundreds of hotels of varying star quality and nobody does this strange way of daily individual holds. Very weird, confusing, and still hard to explain here!

The good things were the pool area had lots of seating with umbrellas. The bell hops and valet staff where wonderful. The hotel restaurants food was great with fast service and they even had a dog menu!

My husband and I got a couples massage that was wonderful, one of the best we've ever had. It was in a private cabana outside. The spa amenities, like salt water hot tub, steam room, and sauna...

This hotel is far, far from what it is listed as being. We arrived on a Friday for a one night stay because we had family photos in the area. On the plus side, they let us use the pool before our room was ready. From there it gets odd. We asked how to change to use the pool and were directed to bathrooms no where near the pool area. (That's because there ARE no bathrooms near the pool area.) The bathrooms themselves were dimly lit, damp and worn. Ok, we figured maybe no one uses these bathrooms. We got to the completely empty pool with what appeared to be no chairs open. Actually, it was just that guests had left their towels and dirty glasses and had left the pool area already, with no one picking up their towels or empty drink glasses. We moved some towels and a bar tender came over and cleared some drinks but left the small table dirty. We were notified that our room was ready and we proceeded to our room to get ready for our photos. The first thing is - the grounds are sprawling and don't make a lot of sense. You leave the lobby building to go to the room building, and we had to go through three or four separate buildings to get to our room. The first thing we noticed was a horrible sewer smell in the hallway. When we got to our room, we were surprised that the "veranda" room just meant that there was a balcony - which overlooks the parking lot. Again, we're not that fussy so you win some you lose some. We also noticed right away that the lighting is extremely low. I felt like something was off because I just couldn't see right. My daughter hops in the shower to get ready for photos and says, mom, eww there is hair in here! She was right. So I turned on my camera phone light (it was so dimly lit) and shined it all over the entryway floor and it's covered in hair. This was not a stray hair. It was tons of it. I pulled back the sheets and there was also a hair in the bedsheets. So now I go to the front desk and am told they can only offer to reclean it and give me a $50 food credit. It seems pitiful for how gross it was as I had photos to show them. We had little choice but to accept their offer and have it cleaned again as we needed to get to photos. About 20ish minutes later, we are told the room is clean and we can go back. No surprise they seemed to have swept about a one foot area of the entryway and left the rest of the room as is. I went back again to the front desk and this time the manager, Kai, asked what he could do -- but never offered to actually look at the room and see what was wrong. He also then questioned why the shower was used and the sheets were pulled back. I basically said at this point I can’t feel comfortable staying here, and he happily offered to just refund us. However, at this point we have no hotel and no where to go to get ready for our family photos. I asked to leave for family photos and come back and check out, and he told us we’d have to room our things immediately if we were checking out. Honestly, after reading reviews again, I am convinced most people who write reviews are only visiting the dining options, bar or spa. There’s not a lot of info given to the rooms and overall quality. In addition, be warned that almost everyone checking in (I spent a lot of time at the front desk) was there on some type of promotion, whether it was AmEx FHR (which we were using) or different types of free parking, free dining credits, spas etc) so they are definitely inflating the prices ($500 a night?!) and then trying to justify them with credits. I gave them one star only because I actually received my refund for the night and they actually processed something right. Stay away, this is not a five star hotel in any location, and especially...