Val Roc Motel

The room had a smell somewhere between cigarettes and mold. I stayed last winter, and like earlier reviewers said, the place didn’t meet basic lodging standards. I hope someone who knows how to run a hotel buys it and cleans it up.

The location is nice, which makes the state of this place even sadder. It feels like a rundown motel, and after fees and taxes we paid close to $200 a night. For about $50 more, you can stay almost anywhere else nearby. This could once have been a modest, proud mom-and-pop place, but it’s being run like a slum. The owners should be ashamed, though I doubt they are. When we arrived, the owner seemed surprised we had booked and paid to stay that night. He fumbled with the computer, disappeared without explanation for 10-15 minutes, then assigned us rooms. Given that and the condition of the rooms, I suspect he moved one or more long-term residents to make room for us. Friends staying with us had the same issues, so it wasn’t just one bad room. Our room had a strong dirty-ashtray smell that made us gag. We’d booked a king and queen double, but got only a king bed, and the sheets were dirty. There were holes in the walls and door, plus a front window missing and patched with cardboard and tape. The water was lukewarm at best, too cold for a shower, and the toilet and bathtub ran constantly. The advertised outdoor hot tub and heated pool weren’t there. After we got home, we had to wash all our clothes, even the ones left in the duffel, because they smelled like a 1970s pool hall. The long-term residents gave the impression that the motel might be used as subsidized housing or a halfway house, and there was all kinds of activity at night. I don’t know how this place hasn’t been shut down. I found photos from a review a year earlier of the room we stayed in, and the damage we saw seemed to have happened since then. It looks like the owners are pocketing income from subsidized long-term residents while watching the motel get destroyed.

I expected filthy and gross after reading the bad reviews, but it was decent enough. The room wasn’t dirty and the beds were fine. Still, the cigarette smell was there, the outlets didn’t work, and the power went out one night. We had no trash bags and just one roll of toilet paper. The website said there was a hot tub, but there wasn’t one. There were four of us in a room with two queen beds, yet the owner said it only slept two and charged us another $100 for the two “extra people.” It felt like a scam.

After skiing at Killington, icy roads forced us to stop here in an emergency. The $160 charge was higher than what reviewers mentioned, though maybe that was because it was a late booking. The heater was broken, so we had to sleep in our ski clothes. The room was filthy, with stains, dust, and cobwebs everywhere, and it smelled old and smoky. At most, I’d consider this for a last-minute stay if it were cheap. Go in with very low expectations.