Casa Del Mar Inn — Hotel in Santa Barbara

Travelers Beware

My fiancée posted this on yelp, I felt the need to follow up on Google.

Long story about imprudent management.

Casa Del Mar Inn rooms are not updated and the photos online are misleading. My fiancée always checks for bed bugs and when we arrived at Casa Del Mar Inn we noticed the mattress was exposed without a fitted sheet and instead two queen top sheets were layered on top of each other to make a king sheet "hospital quarters style bed". We found this odd so we called the front desk and Dan said they don't put fitted sheets on king beds (odd). After clearly looking unsatisfied the front desk worker, Dan, bluntly said "the room is non-refundable". I tried to figure out a solution because the room really was not up to our standards for the price, but Dan would not budge, so we were stuck. We tried to shower and move on but the shower filled with water to our ankles. We were then moved to another room that was worse then the first.

This is where things heat up... my fiancée and I discussed getting a different hotel for the second night, so my fiancée went and asked the same guy, Dan, to confirm the cost of the first night so we can look at the possibility to stay a different hotel for night two. He confirmed the amount and gave us an itemized receipt reflecting the cost of the first night. Not once during this interaction did my fiancée say we were forfeiting the second night, she simply asked to understand the breakdown of the cost. After going back to our room and talking it over, we decided to stay because it was non-refundable and our friends were staying in one of the villas.

The next day we had plans to explore the wineries that were an hour away. NOW LISTEN TO THIS.. At the first winery, my fiancée gets a call from the hotel saying we missed check out and we need to remove our luggage and personal belongings from the room because they have another guest staying in our room. EXCUSE ME?! We nearly choked on our wine. We were HARASSED by Dan who kept repeating "We had two options - they will move our luggage and personal belongings to storage or downgrade our room and they will move our belongings for us". Either way, our luggage and personal belongings needed to be moved. Throughout this phone conversation at the winery (now on speaker phone so our friends know what was going on) , Dan aggressively said they were going to send housekeeping in to gather our things and move it into storage or to the queen room, "our choice". WHAT?! In a national pandemic we were not comfortable with that, and like most people staying in a hotel our belongings were not the most organized and in different areas of the room. My fiancée's skin care was out and she didn't want a stranger packing up her undies and beauty supplies. We cannot express how horrible Dan was to us. Just beyond rude, irrational, not understanding of the situation, and gave us no realistic options.

We had to make our friends miss two wineries on our tour to drive an hour back to the hotel to get our luggage and personal belongings. Once there, we had to make sure we were to get refunded for the second night. During the confirmation of the refund (waiting for the receipts and proof of refund of second night), Dan came out and I told him how we felt. From there, Dan accused us of trespassing and how "we are finished and done here". We had to remind him, that our business was not done because we were waiting for the receipt to be printed for proof of refund for the second night. During this, Dan decided it was professional to try to stare me down for 30 seconds (felt like 5 minutes), LOL. After this confrontation Dan had with us, we quickly gathered and went to check into the La Playa Inn where we stayed the first night.

Dan was so unbelievably unprofessional and the other worker Aneesa was equally as horrified and kept apologizing for his behavior.

We will be filing a complaint with the BBB as this was by far the...

This inn dates from 1925, but looks more like 1940’s bungalow. It was supposedly updated in 2006, but the room we stayed in looked like it was from the 1990’s. The pictures on the website are deceiving, it’s not as nice as the pictures make it look. There was a very dysfunctional kitchen, no counter space, an oven that didn’t work, and no kitchen drawers. The silverware was put in a cupboard on top of some dishes. We had to scrounge dish soap from the inn’s kitchen (which was as old as everything else) There was literally dishes for 2, some pots and pans and that was about it. No serving dishes of any kind, no bowls but cereal bowls. The whole place smelled like mold and mildew. We went out and got some Lysol to spray but it didn’t help much. There was a couch and chair that was so old and dirty I wouldn’t sit on it even covered with a sheet. The springs were shot. They should both go to the dump. Parking is limited. I don’t understand good reviews of this place. Positives are they take dogs, it’s close to the beach and pier, and the have breakfast in the morning. It’s small and quaint with a small courtyard and a fire pit. The staff was friendly and accommodating. It’s too bad this place is not kept up better. It would be lovely to keep the architectural details and update it to the 21st century. It could be so much better. My guess it would need about a million dollars to renovate to make it up to good standards. It would be worth it. I wish I could buy it, I would in a heartbeat. But alas I’m not a money...

THE GOOD: Cozy inn with a B&B feel in a great location near the beach in Santa Barbara. My room felt more like a studio apartment than a hotel room, with a door to the outside, a spacious bathroom with small fridge & microwave, and a sitting area outside in a small garden.

I loved having a bathtub and street parking available right outside my room. Staff were friendly and helpful.

THE NOT-SO-GOOD:

WiFi was not great (low bars and it would go in and out) and cell reception was also spotty. I’m glad I didn’t have any zoom calls while I was staying!

The breakfast was mainly packaged items (no eggs, for example) and the wine & cheese happy hour was so-so. Nice that they offer these, but I skipped because they weren’t good quality (obviously just the stuff from the grocery store).

They also don’t have any water kettles in the room, none available at the front desk nor any container I could use to brew hot water to make tea in my room. I’ve traveled all over the world and this is a standard offering even in places like Southeast Asia. I was surprised they couldn’t find any solution for me, and was unable to make tea during my stay. (I’m not talking about a tea bag in a cup, but proper Chinese loose leaf tea that I brew at high temps and need a lot of water to prepare)

It was charming and worked out just fine, but it would have been nice to have some of the amenities of places nearby like a jacuzzi, restaurant, better WiFi and hopefully...