Astro Motel — Hotel in Santa Rosa

Final update: unable to sleep the second night because of our upstairs neighbors and the floor being just a concrete slab where sound resonates incredibly well. We left as soon as we could and were met with the owner (?) who asked how it was and I said "it was ok" to which he said "ok is good!" That sums is up for me: they're aiming for the middle.

Update: still no food or coffee by 10 AM. Also no microwave, so you better not have any leftovers from the nearby restaurants. Also no coffee pot in room, so unless you are one of the lucky few to actually get coffee in the morning, you're SOL. Definitely won't return.

I'm currently in the middle of my stay. It's ok. I'll update if anything changes. The shower is nice, the room has some cute details, the A/C works well. But it all feels like a face-lift rather than a lived-in design choice. Looking at old reviews, it seems that this place did go through some renovations over the last few years so the lack of creativity is a little forgivable. I'm not much of a stay-in-the-room type person anyway, but wanted to include that in case someone sees the photos and thinks the rooms are gonna be decked out with seafoam green and pastel, LIFE magazines and egg chairs and Kit Cat clocks. There's a couple small throwbacks but nothing major. The reason I'm rating so low is because of the lack of amenities. Nothing in the room is free except the towels. In the mini fridge were two local beers (Old Caz in Rohnert Park, good beers) and two Boxed Waters. On the desk are two bags: one of a pretzel/popcorn mix, and one of just some toasted and spiced nuts. Next to them is a list detailing the prices of everything. Having already opened the pretzels and cracked the beer, I was honored to find out I'd be paying $20 for those two items. $20 for pretzels and one can of beer. When we arrived we were told about a wine tasting in the lounge. I stopped by to check it out only to find that it wasn't included and would be $30 for 4 glasses. Not an unreasonable price by any means for a wine flight, but the fact that it wasn't included in our stay, or at a discount, means the hotel was too cheap to buy 5 or 6 bottles of wine at wholesale from the vineyard and do a guest tasting. We've stayed at plenty of hotels in this area that do this for around the same price they're charging (Gaige House in Glen Ellen being one of our favorites). The lounge itself has the most decor and "vibe" so it's pretty cool to see. But that's all that it is. They don't serve drinks or snacks, aside from maybe coffee when it's actually available. I showed up for breakfast this morning around 8:30, and there were 3 or 4 donuts left and some fruit and no coffee. They had one coffee pot for, I don't know, 50+ guests? Also, what a wasted opportunity to not serve mid century cocktails and funky snacks. The 50s and 60s were the Years of Indulgence for cocktails. Post-prohibition. The martini, the Wallbanger, the Gin Fizz! and it' be so easy to serve low-cost, low-setup snacks like jell-o, fondue, or even cocktail shrimp and deviled eggs. All that require nothing more than one standalone burner and a pot. I'd pay extra for that experience, I don't want to pay extra for a bag of trail mix. All this nickel-and-diming is just super discouraging. Especially when you're competing with hotels very close by that will give you the shirt off their back. The final thing is the parking situation: it's pretty bad. I understand that there are more people nowadays than when this motel was built (1963), but you gotta update the parking. Somehow, some way. We were told that if we can't fit into the overflow parking in the back (which is just 5 or so spots outlined with spray paint that are far too tight) then we'd have to find street parking. I'm sorry but if you can't accommodate one car per room at your hotel or motel, I'm not coming back. I'm not paying you $220+ per night to park on a random street and have my car broken into. Tear down that shack behind the motel, remove the debris, and put in...

The rooms are cute and certainly have that 60s vibe to it. It's cozy and I'm sure was really expensive to renovate as the in room brochure describes

I don't frequent Santa Rosa much, or even California for that matter

However, I am familiar with the rates a room goes for in the local area

We dropped $200+ on our double for one night, not including taxes imposed by the state, local BIA, and county BIA. Far from what google was showing us in terms of prices before taxes. Did NOT receive a price statement when making the reservation on the phone, and instead was sent a receipt via email. Those without internet beware. They have a policy of cancellation within 24 hours like most places, and we were going to stay the same night we reserved

So we were committed, show up, and found the price on arrival. Again, those without internet beware

We get to our rooms and are immediately disappointed. While the outside certainly has the flare, the interior to our room did not, resembling what would seem to be a budget of maybe $100 at a thrift store. MAYBE the price for the room, with location and the season and all, equals out to what we paid for our night, but to me doesn't. Place resembled a hooky Route 66 place with a gimmick; a fun place, but not up to the specs it tries to present itself with. Whoever they got to repaint the walls also took the money and ran it would seem due to the presence of paint splattered all over the edges to the floors. That isn't mentioning the flooring is concrete, which may be a plus but shows the history to the building. Imagine my lack of surprise when opening the in room pamphlet detailing how the building used to be a drug house up until just last year where a local business woman, who was a chef and opened their own restaurant in 2012, headed the project that is this place. It would explain our welcome of some men yelling at each other in the surrounding neighborhood..... which I'll give a pass on since the hotel is at a central location for downtown and it's California. Comes with the territory

Overall, if your budget is fairly high and you want a cozy little place with some flair near downtown, this place can be a very easy recommendation.... though perhaps at more of a rate of $180 or $160 instead of what we dropped. That would be what I'd value the rooms at, and that's being generous. However, for anyone just traveling through, you're much better off getting a room for half the price...

We stayed at Astro Motel for 2 nights and we were not able to park at the motel’s parking lot for either night because it could not accommodate more than 12 cars which is ridiculous. By definition, a motel is a place where it anticipates its guests to be coming with a motor vehicle, hence it a motel and not a hotel. We parked at the overflow parking which is equally full and I am uncertain if it was actually used by Astro’s guest. We were recommended street parking which we need to move our car at 9 am every morning. On our second night, we came back around 8 to a monoxide alarm that went off. We went to see the front desk and the inexperienced staff wasn’t trained to provide much assistance. He first offered as recommended by his manager to remove the detector from our room and get it fix the next day because it was late. We did not accept to stay in a room absent the detector considering that it was put in the room for our safety. As such, the manager has to come in attempting to resolve the problem. We asked to be moved to another room but the motel appeared to be fully booked. It was already 9:30pm and the manager didn’t appear to have more knowledge than the staff. She did offer to get a new detector from nearby to which we agreed. She came back with the new detector, having trouble to figure out how to use it, she got frustrated and plain out said “I obviously don’t know what I’m doing so tell me what you want, I will refund you and you can go find other accommodations”. That was at 10:15 and I was livid as it was late to start looking for last minute accommodation and she offered no assistance in doing so. She simply wanted us to agree to stay without the detector or leave at this point. We ended up asking her to find another detector in a storage room which we can put in our room for the night. And miraculously, an empty room appeared as they finally called up a no show at 10:45. We were moved to that room only to notice the duvet was full of dirty spots. We ended up moving the duvet from our old room to the new one. When all settled in, it was 11:15 pm. Way to spend a supposedly relaxing night... the manager offered an extra free night stay, but at this point, we were eager to...