Calista Organic Hotel — Hotel in San Francisco

I CAN NOT STRESS ENOUGH THAT YOU SHOULD NOT BOOK THIS HOTEL The listing of the hotel and the reality are two very different things. The exterior is run down with the windows board and graffiti on then As you step in into the building it is grubby and very unwelcoming.The 24hr reception area is none existent along with the daily replenished refreshment area. Booking in was difficult. Although there is a WhatsApp QR code this was not answered for 2 days when messaged and then they where not helpful at all. 3.The lift last compliance inspection certificate is dated 2016, the communal areas are smelly and the carpets are dirty. Smoke detectors and fire extinguishers have been removed from a number of floors in particular 3rd floor. The fire escapes are blocked with the rubbish bins that are left there overflowing until late afternoon. 4.The rooms are a decent size however ever they are not like the photos. The reality is that you are not able to make a drink in the room as there is not a kettle,no crockery or cutlery. There is no hairdryer No door on the wardrobe No smoke detector in my room 305 which I later found out had been missing since Feb 2023. The door locking system has been added to old doors and as a consequence has damaged the door and it looks as if they have been forced open. My room 305 the door internally had blue sticky tape down the side of the door where the hinges where to cover the large gaps. My sons room 303 he was unable to use his shower as it would flood the bathroom. Reported this numerous times and no one came to fix it. For the whole of our stay we had no wifi in our four rooms on two different floors. Even though there are multiple routers the only place where wifi was accessible was in the unwelcoming lobby. It would not surprise me in the least if the bill had not been paid and this was the reason for no wifi. Cleaning could be better, I dared to look under the bed, fluff,dust and debris from other guests. I had a lovely stained carpet also. The immediate area is very noisy as there is a bus stop right outside. You are on main streets with a high volume of traffic from 5am -1am this resulted in the rooms being noisy due to single pane glass in them. Previous 5 STAR reviews, please know that these are fake, false or bought. In the reviews they talk about the gardens views, the food service and the serenity, this is all nonsense as there is none of these provided at the hotel. The staff experience, this is very lacking. If you are a hotel with minimum face to face contact service that's fine, but you need to provide good customer communication service. The manager, I would say lacking in skills to manage a hotel and the on-site staff (of which I only saw one the house keeper Irene, who I met twice once getting into the hotel and the other time when I had to find her for more toilet paper). The fact that the manager "directed " the handyman to attend to the shower in my soon room 303 but he never did even though I reported this several times. Any one who wants to look further into the owner of the property I found it to be Catherine Zhang Pacific Property Ventures LLC 899 Pine Street San Francisco. Pacific property Ventures have also had to lawsuits recently against them 2022 & 2024 ONCE AGAIN DO NOT STAY HERE If I could give them a...

There is no way the positive reviews for this hotel are real. My first night a group of men went down the hall on my floor banging on all the doors calling for their friend at 3:48am. Then when their friend opened the door they proceeded to argue for 30 minutes in the hallway. I believe a police officer came at some point to remove them from the premises. I was sleeping with earplugs in and could still hear everything clearly. My second night when I arrived at the hotel and walked to my floor there were two people smoking dope outside my door. I asked them if they were here last night too and they said no but asked if I could give them money or sell them more drugs. I immediately booked another room at a different hotel and left. Also the elderly doorman is clueless (bless him though) and there is no one who works there on the premises after sundown. The doors don’t have keys but electronic lock keypads and no way of locking them from the inside. The room was disgusting and falling apart, the pillows were virtually air, bed wasn’t made, the walls had streaks of mildew/mold, etc. definitely do not stay here.

Edit: upon getting to the Hilton (which even this last minute for a weekend stay was only marginally more expensive than the Calista) and describing my experience with the concierge, he recounted a plethora or horror stories from guests exactly like myself who’d booked night-of stays at the Hilton after realizing their mistake of booking with Calista. He also relayed to me that the Calista is really an SRO building which tenants rent rooms to outsiders under the guise of it being a hotel, and which has no legitimate staff. Makes sense. The only person present when I arrived during the middle of the day was a clueless old man (bless him), and the reason I knew the codes to the entrance and to my room was because a random phone number had texted me in broken English the lock codes and a breakdown of the WiFi (which didn’t work anyway) a couple hours after my promised check in time. Thankfully I arrived later in the day so it didn’t matter in the end that the information arrived late. Regardless, heinous experience, wouldn’t recommend.

Edit 2: the 5 star reviews for this hotel are so obviously fake 😂. “Fine dining” and “spacious room with balcony”. There is certainly no dining here (it’s not even advertised) and one look at the building and it’s obvious there are no...

Terrible service: arrived at check-in time: no- one at the desk and no-one answering the phone number or email address provided.

A ?maintenance man turned up and was entirely unhelpful. He stood in the very small lobby with us, coughing and sniffing for a time, then left to wander around out the back. The cleaning lady was lovely, but couldn’t help us.

After about 45 minutes of waiting and calling, texting and emailing, we managed to get hold of someone, who gave us codes for our rooms.

The rooms were sufficient, but very tired looking: lots of dings in the paintwork, badly patched areas, scuffed floors, ratty blinds. The exterior windows looked like they had never been cleaned and were difficult to see out of in some parts.

One room smelled badly of body odour. The other room was missing the fire alarm and heater. We were assured the fire alarm would be replaced, a heater and a spare blanket provided, but this did not happen during our three night stay. It was chilly at night and there was no way to heat one of the rooms. When we followed this up on the second day, we were told housekeeping had gone and to try the following day. On the third day, we could not find housekeeping, but the maintenance man was there, who was again, entirely unhelpful, suspicious of our request, rude, mildly threatening and disparaging of the management, stating “They don’t know what goes on here.”

The fire exit window was left open over night, with access through it via a fire escape to the street outside. No-one came to close this at night, so it was not secure. One room’s door had been forced or attempted to be forced open at some point and the other room’s door did not latch well, causing issues with the locks. I don’t know if the lock codes are changed between occupants.

The rooms were also VERY loud at night, with lots of traffic noise, music and shouting on the streets, especially on the weekend.

This hotel seems to be very poorly run and maintained. The communication between staff and customers is poor.

I would definitely not recommend staying here and would never stay again.

I would ask for my money back if I thought I had any chance of...