Moxy Santa Barbara — Hotel in Santa Barbara

First thing to note is this is more of a hostel than a hotel. If you just need a spot to lay your head while you explore Downtown Santa Barbara, then this is a good choice. The funk zone, state street, and the warf are all walking distance. There is a communal kitchen to store and prepare your food in lieu of a in-room mini fridge. A lounge space with board games. There is a bar and a pantry with snacks available, both for a fee. The free breakfast is cold coffee and stale muffins. The pool is 3ft 10inches deep and is so small that more than 5 people in it will feel overwhelming. The staff are friendly overall, no complaints about any of them. My partner, housemate, and I stayed at the hotel for 3 days while our apartment was being worked on, we appreciated this hotel's pet policy as we have 2 cats. We booked a double room with 2 queen beds, 183 Sq ft, yet when we arrive the room is barely 100sq ft and the beds are full size. I double checked my booking and saw the Sq footage changed but it still promised 2 queen beds. We were tired from having to vacate our apartment on short notice and decided to just accept the room's size and beds. We learned that the walls were so thin, we heard every conversation in the lobby, hallways and other rooms; every guest come and go. Our cats were very stressed out over the sound. I asked for a room away from foot traffic if possible. Later, our remote controlled curtains would not go down. Being so tired, we tied up some blankets for privacy and called it a night. As we slept, the A/C unit gave off a weird bubbling sound while on and off. Next morning we asked the front desk for assistance on the curtains as they won't move anymore. We waited many hours for maintenance man to arrive, as we were told that there is only one man for multiple Marriott locations. We learned that the batteries on the curtain were not charged prior to our stay. Once they charged, for about an hour, the curtains came down and then refused to go back up again. In the end we accepted the blinds being permanently down and the staff gave us binder clips to use to hold them up. They didn't stay up much however, because the view of the parking lot and front door did not provide much in the feeling of privacy. We checked the windows from the outside looking in and found that we were fully visible inside our room, even moreso at night. The room appeared to be an old coat room with the bar on one side and a utility closet on the other. The television hung on the wall just under the many hooks and was not able to be pulled out. It could not be tilted toward either bed so instead it sat at an awkward angle not ideal for either bed.

The beds were definitely full sized and not queens. Additionally, within the layers of bedding, some layers were not big enough to go across the whole bed. The mattress was so thin that you could feel the bed frame and the lack of headboard made it more uncomfortable to sit and watch the awkward TV. The bathroom is large and spacious and beautifully decorated. The room needs a fan and the toilet seat could use a lid. The shower had a removable head with two mount options: One that sat above your head and only affixed at a 90° angle. Another that sits at your chest and tilts down onto a shower seat. Either way, the water hits the shower curtain and floods the bathroom floor way too easily.

I did appreciate the steamer and blow dryer.

Overall we felt the lack of larger amenities and lack of functional amenities made us feel that the cost was not equal to the experience. We enjoyed the location but we'd hoped we would feel okay to leave our pets for an hour or two in a stress free environment. The noise, the hostel vibe yet high price, and the false advertisement of room size/amenities. We admit that we did not look into it enough for our needs/expectations due to a...

Summary: Choose a different hotel. I DONT RECOMMEND!

Let me start by saying I'm a Lifetime Bonvoy customer. I travel over 150 days per year which means I stay in a lot of hotels. The Moxy aka Waterman in Santa Barbara has to be by far one of if not worse experiences I've had at a Bonvoy property. Location was great... But expect to hear the cars going under the 101 on State St. It did not feel like the hotel was insulated well.

At check-in the front desk did not seem interested in welcoming guest. Looks like they were too busy on the computer. Most Bonvoy hotels recognize and acknowledge my Titanium Status, but not this hotel. I was told I received a complimentary upgrade for the room. I really would have hated to see what the room they were originally planning to give me.

I was expecting the room to be small from the description when I booked, but I also booked letting them know I was with a 1year old toddler and would need a crib. The room was so small we could barely squeeze in the pack and play crib they gave us.

We also needed a fridge to put the baby's milk but none available in the room. They did have a communal fridge in the lobby which was pretty big. Beware: they do not clean that fridge. There's a note to put the date of you check out on a postit on the food you put in the fridge. Which is great, but they don't clean out the fridge. I saw and smelled food with dates from a few weeks back. When I told the front desk that there seemed to be some old food there, all they said was "thank you" and did nothing.

The first night in the room was loud from the cars mufflers echoing through the underpass and the room was extremely cold. I thought maybe I had set the AC wrong. The next morning we experienced the contractors opening and slamming the door at the end of the hallway. Our room was at the end of the hallway.

Let's talk about the tiny bathroom, which basically had the toilet in the shower. The shower head was a bit moldy and corroding. Luckily the upgraded room meant we had a door that accessed the pool. The light above the shower was hanging out of its ballast.

The door leading to the pool would jam and open very difficult and when it closed, it would not lock. The pool was very nice and heated. That was nice. After spending the day around Santa Barbara we went back to the room to let the baby take a nap. Even though it was in the mid 60°s and a sunny day in Santa Barbara, the room was a stuffy and hot. The AC was not working. When I called the front desk at 4:15p they told me the maintenance person and the manager already had left for the day so there was nothing they could do other then give me a fan. The front desk was next to useless anytime we needed anything.

I think this hotel needs a lesson in...

TL;DR-housekeeping packed my bags while I was checked-in and stole my brand new iPhone 7. Had been a regular guest prior.

It was maybe the 6th time I’d stayed there and I’d purchased an iPhone 7 the day I flew down which I left charging in my room. Picture a surreal 85-degree November morning, two days after the election, on which I was scheduled to check out. Late morning I step out next door to Rebar Coffee while my plastic film-covered black matte iPhone 7 charges in the room alongside its box, and carry with me to breakfast my old iPhone 6 with the active SIM. Imagine my horror when I return to the hotel to pick up my bags after breakfast only to learn that the front desk mistakenly “thought I had checked out already and forgotten (all) of my possessions in the room” which was asinine as I’d only taken my laptop case next door. To my dismay they had packed my clothes into knotted plastic trash bags and put only a few of my clothes and shoes into my rimowa carry-on. I left in a state of shock and unpacked my bag shortly after only to find that the iPhone box was empty and the phone was completely gone. I franticly searched every crevice and shoe and there was no trace of my virgin iPhone 7. Had I put my active SIM into it I could have used Find My iPhone to track down the guilty employee but this feature was not enabled without an active SIM. I immediately informed the assistant GM Cleve Moore about the problem and he assured me they would question the employees involved in packing my things. Cleve seemed very genuine about resolving things but he was only the assistant GM. TL;DR— the property gave me the run-around for several months, dragging the claim/internal-investigation into the holidays. I naively delayed filing a police report with SBPD as both the GM and Corporate led me to believe their insurance company Zurich would resolve the incident but in the end they refused to take any responsibility at all and, to add insult to theft, the dozen phone calls and emails I made ended up being a fruitless waste of my time.

At this point I've filed reports with Santa Barbara Police Department, American Express, Zurich Insurance (property's insurer), the parent company - Pacific Hotels (Christy Edson, Corporate Director of Risk Management), both the GM and Assistant GM, and HotelsTonight who acted as the intermediary in this transaction. HotelsTonight actually encouraged me to "write a review about your stay so that others can be aware of your experience" but said they couldn't go into the "acceptable" number of internal thefts by a given property before it would be...