Hotel San Luis Obispo

The room was clean and the staff were very courteous and professional. We stayed in room 263. Apparently there is some type of utility or staff service room above it and there is loud thumping and banging starting at 5am! No guest should ever be placed in this room.

I stay in hotels for a living and have pretty strong opinions about what makes a good hotel so when I say I’m impressed with a hotel then they’ve done a very good job. I have a few critiques, but they are very minor & would not prevent me from staying here again. The great: It’s a smaller hotel, but every room level has an ice machine PLUS flat or sparkling water on tap for your convenience. Amazing. They put bottles of filtered water in your room mini fridge so it’s nice and cold and refillable! They make water access easy and then elevate it. The rooms are cute, love having a balcony, the roof top bar has great views, some entertainment & lots of seating. I only dined at one restaurant, but the portions were massive & it was really good! They offer live music out by the pool & some nice outdoor seating. Even the stairwell is nicely decorated which is a first. It’s a smaller hotel & there’s only one elevator so many people use the stairs! The hotel has nice wide hallways, lots of windows and a great location. House keeping comes TWICE a day! 👏🏻 The rooms have lots of lighting and while the lighting control can be annoying when you’re trying to figure them out it is really great to have overhead lighting in a hotel, that’s so rare AND it’s all dimmable! 🙌🏻. They have a great Bluetooth speaker for use in your room (yellow light means it’s on, blue light means it’s off, just to save you some headache). They have automatic window shades on the windows and complimentary snacks in the drawers, PLUS a nespresso! 👏🏻 I liked all the soaps, the makeup towel, robes & slippers, makeup remover towelettes and the other bathroom amenities that are rare, like facial pads, q-tips and cotton balls! The not so great: The hotel can be quiet loud, you can hear people in the hallways if they are “having fun” pretty easily and the street noise can be quiet loud too. Use that awesome boothtooth speaker to play some white noise or whatever you’re into and you’ll be happy as a clam! The balcony doors have shutters and while I really enjoyed them, as opposed to the typical gross curtains I usually see, I didn’t love them as much at night. I adjusted them as much as I could to block as much light as possible, but I faced the parking garage and those lights don’t have any chill. So pitch black with shutters is not possible like it is with blackout curtains. You also have to line them up juuuust right to make sure there are no peep hole gaps on the side and that the door is completely covered. The only manual lights are the bedside lamps and it’s not an obvious switch. I spent an epic amount of time trying to figure out which switch turned them off. Finally calling the front desk for help. The sofa is extremely uncomfortable and it looks like it could be laid flat to become another bed, but oh man that would not be a great bed at all! Hopefully they provide some sort of pad for it! Keep that in mind if you plan to pack it into a room! The shower (no tub) is designed with the recently popular stationary half door design. That said, they did a real disservice to us when they installed a fixed door and then put the shower operation knob on that far interior wall right under the shower head. You have to reach in and get hit with the cold water while trying to turn the knob all the way to hot. Hopefully you don’t make it too hot or you’ll be scalded while trying to reach in and adjust it to the temp you want. Overall the design feels like it wasn’t thought through with guests in mind. The gym is adequate, with some good equipment. Bless them for having some sort of leg machine not many hotels do. The automatic lights are annoying when I’m on the corner bike for a long time and they just shut off. I have to stop my ride and get up to get them back on. They have a water fountain in there which feels like a cost savings decision compared to other hotels, but at least it has a water bottle filler attached and it was cold! Overall, it’s a great hotel operated by a small chain and the staff is nice!