The Hotel Castro — Hotel in San Francisco

POSITIVE:|Check in was easy - on our arrival day (Monday), we requested and received early (3 pm) check in (normal is 4 pm), which was helpful as Castro St. rush hour starts after 3 on weekdays. Didn’t have a problem with the access code mentioned in other reviews at check in or throughout stay. There’s a space right in front for easy loading/unloading. Note: if you have a car (we didn’t), parking is limited - the hotel recommends using SpotHero. To get an overnight (free) street space, you likely would need to find one up Castro or one of the cross-streets, which is doable but will take luck & time. Tip if you have a car: drop bags off, punch in access code and drop off in room. There are 4 rooms each on floors 2,3,4. Level 5 is roof lounge with excellent panoramic views (when not raining) couches and cozy fire pit. We booked a handicap accessible room (we needed two twin beds). Our room had a toilet/shower room with pocket door, sink with lighted mirror just outside pocket door, 2 twin beds, HDTV connected to wifi, 1/2 height wardrobe cabinet below TV, small fridge, coffee maker, tea kettle, small table for meals/work, and terrace overlooking back of property. Terrace had a chair and small cube. Prior reviews indicate better to be in back of building on higher floor. We were in back - it WAS very quiet, peaceful - got great non-interrupted sleep. Plenty of nice restaurants, a really nice supermarket, pharmacy, a Starbucks, and shops within walking distance. There are some homeless but they’re friendly and respectful and we never didn’t feel safe. (One actually held door open when I went into Walgreens and hands were full.). Check out was easy - take photo of QR code, leave door hanger, vacate unit, building. We were asked in texts a couple of times if all was well on our stay. Never needed to contact customer support.||FOR IMPROVEMENT:|We only found out lobby bar not open Monday or Tuesday - after arrival Monday (and we checked out Wednesday morning.) Still, they gave us two drink tokens - which we will use if/when we return.|Very limited counter space and no shelves - none in toilet/shower room, a little area on either side of sink, small table (see note about lighting below), a few sq cm on nightstand between beds(see note about lighting below), and top of wardrobe closet.|Very few power outlets - there is a cluster of 4 with 4 usb slots on small table, one behind nightstand(see note about lighting below), 2 on wall between small table and wardrobe, 2 at door, 2 hopefully GFI protected (didn’t see reset button) at sink - so unless you travel with a power strip, you’re going to have to sequence what gets recharged when thru your stay, or leave phone/ipad etc. away from bedside - not road warrior desireable.|Coffee maker is Nespresso - lots of caffeinated pods zero decaf pods (for old timers or an evening cup. More caf pods in essentials cabinet on 1st floor lobby. They also provide small assortment of teas in room and more in essentials cabinet.|Lighting and light switches not optimal. No light fixture above or on small table - closest light to table are sconces on either side of beds - hard to see what you’re doing at night. Lamp on nightstand is wired to outlet controlled by dimmer switch for sconces. Not well thought out. You turn off sconces with wall switch (which also turns off nightstand lamp). If you wake up you are in complete darkness and have to make it over to wall switch to light lamp on nightstand. Guest before us plugged nightstand lamp into 2nd outlet which left zero outlets for phone chargers. Hence if you like your phone charging at bedside, and want to be able to turn off bedside light, you will need a power strip (unless management realizes this and provides another.)|Below the TV is an Android mini-tablet - it is a Google Hub, can play soothing audio, and although I’m techie competent, i never figured out how to pair to TV, or stream from my iPhone or iPad to the TV. To stream, i had to sign in on tv to various apps - i.e. Fubo, Netflix, etc. That is what faqs card says you have to do so if you want to watch Netflix etc, make sure you travel with pw’s - you won’t be able to stream from an iPad or iPhone.|Beds were def not your typical (firm) American hotel grade - they reminded me of European hotel mattresses on a frame with slats - no box spring, comfortable but didn’t support, so slept on my side to...

I was excited to stay at Hotel Castro, and to be in the middle of one of the most queer historically significant neighborhoods in SF. Unfortunately, the location is the only thing I really enjoyed while staying here. For $300-$400 a night, you really do not get what you pay for. There is a pretty long list of inconveniences I experienced while staying here. Here are some of the top few: There is no front desk management, and the hotel is run through a service named Kasa. Maybe good for people who are avoiding social interaction, but it does leave you doing more work for check in, booking, requesting things, etc. Mostly it created a barrier for me where I felt like there wasn't really anyone around to help when I needed things. The human element of hospitality is important. The couch in our room was extremely uncomfortable. Cheap, squeaky, and we actually spent a lot less time in our room because it just wasn't nice to hang out in. There was no place to really comfortably sit in our room which wasn't just in the bed. The balcony chairs are also pretty uncomfortable. We learned there is a noise monitor in our room after receiving an automated alert that we were "being too loud". I didn’t realize we were being surveilled in that way, and it was honestly unsettling. Also, the noise? The hotel provided hair dryer. Just an unpleasant and unnecessary reprimand. I took a personal phone call outside the hotel and sat at a table in front of the Lobby Bar, and someone came out and told me I had to order something to sit there. Our welcome card literally says guests at the hotel are welcome to hang out in the lobby bar. I felt like I was maybe being profiled or chastised for doing something wrong? Idk, I'm a paying guest at the hotel, and even if I wasn't, the bar was dead. it wasn't like I was taking up someone's seat. Our TVs in our room never worked. They both ran extremely slowly (like 5+ minutes to boot up, won't load anything fast enough to stream or watch anything at all) and one of our remotes didn’t work. The wifi is so slow we also couldn't use it. It effectively removed all in suite entertainment. There were other small issues throughout our stay: our shower had a pretty significant leak and kept dripping all night every night, housekeeping won't clean your room unless you specifically request it during your stay, the fire pit on the roof was out of order and the music played up there is situated right behind the seating so the obnoxious droning slow pop synth was too distracting to really relax. There's also no part of the roof with shade, so if it's too hot it's not a great place to hang out. Holes in our throw pillows. And late checkout has a fee of $102 for 2 HOURS. Just so insane. Also hope you are alright with the intimacy of anyone in your room hearing absolutely everything you do in the bathroom, because it is fully audible. The pocket door for the bathroom is hard to operate and has gaps so all sound escapes. Hope you're good with that lol There are not many amenities- no parking, no breakfast, not even an ice machine. The rooms are tiny for the price.

Overall it wouldn't have been a horrible stay if it cost $150-$250 a night. But it is at least double that, and for all of the reasons stated I will likely not be...

Location: 5 Stars Everything Else: 1-2 Stars

My husband and I were going to San Francisco, and we wanted to stay in the Castro. The location is great, but other than the location, nothing justifies the price being charged. We decided to splurge a bit in order to stay somewhere nice, so forgive me in thinking that the place would be at least somewhat responsive, reasonably well managed or well maintained. It was none of these. I would say that our experience was best described by the phrase “bait and switch.”

The first part is somewhat my own fault, but I had interpreted the line “there is parking across the street” to mean there was some sort of parking facility nearby. There is not. This is referring to street parking and two potential spots around the corner that you can reserve through a website or app, which is great except when someone else has already claimed both. We were lucky to mostly get one of those spots when we needed it. I would not recommend anyone driving or renting a car to stay here, it was a hassle.

In the elevator, there’s a flyer advertising the downstairs bar and showing a cocktail they offer, noting that you get two free drink tokens. The first thing we do when we get in after unpacking is take these tokens and go downstairs to the bar, which is a quiet prohibition-era cocktail place. We make our orders and show the tokens only to be told that these tokens only pay for rail drinks or beer. Getting the cocktail advertised as a complimentary drink would cost extra. I hope that the tens, possibly hundreds of dollars in costs they cut by cheaping out on their guests is worth it. For us, after paying for our complimentary drinks, we didn’t go back.

They texted me to say that if we wanted the room cleaned to let them know. Great, we’re heading out on our second-to-last day early in the morning and I ask if we could have the room cleaned at some point during the day. At this point I got a response that they do not promise to have cleaners in and apologizing that it might take longer than 24 hours (at which point it would no longer be needed). When I complained about this they promptly sent someone.

Several times when we were here the elevator stopped working and we had to use the stairs. The room was fine except that there were a few stains on the sheets when we got in, it was very small but we expected that. Also, the latch on the bathroom door didn’t work. The view from the top floor deck was nice, we had a room facing the back, so we didn’t have much of a view, but I suspect the front-facing rooms were better. Again, not faulting them for that.

This is not the first contactless hotel or micro hotel or what not that we’ve stayed in. We know to expect less in terms of services than a traditional hotel. But at least for when we were staying, this was as expensive as almost any corporate, boutique, or designer hotel in Union Square or downtown, excepting high luxury spots like Four Seasons or the Ritz. In exchange, we got a profoundly mediocre room and sub par experience that was only acceptable because of the location. The advantage of being in the Castro is great, but if I had the chance to do it again, I’d just stay somewhere nice and get an uber when needed, it would have been much...