Ojai Retreat & Inn

After I left the review below, the hotel emailed to cancel my reservation without a refund, then relisted the room for the dates I’d booked. The owner also threatened to sue me over the review. I’ve seen other negative reviews on different sites with angry staff replies. One reviewer said staff wouldn’t refund her when she was sick and worried she might have COVID, but still encouraged her to stay. We booked for the coming weekend, then quickly found out about the no-child and no-pet policy. We tried to cancel, but the property refused because of a five-day cancellation policy. The site we booked through hadn’t mentioned that policy, and our reservation was only three days ahead. They still had many rooms available, so it’s not as though we’d taken the last room and stopped someone else from booking. This feels like a shady way to take money, especially since we tried to cancel so quickly. Please don’t give these crooks your business. There are plenty of other places to stay in Ojai run by businesses with integrity.

The hilltop location is beautiful and the views are nice, but the room we had was shabby and old. A couple of the windows wouldn’t work, the towels looked like they were from another century, and the Wi-Fi barely worked in our room most of the time.

The view was the one redeeming part. The rooms are very old, and though the area itself was nice, there were no restaurants nearby, so you’ll need to drive into town. The cleaner came once and never returned, which meant we couldn’t get our rubbish emptied. For the high October price, the place felt basic and disappointing.

We were so disappointed after reading all the glowing reviews. We stayed in the green room, reached through the kitchen and hallway, and had to walk through a women’s group event to get there. The place is shabby and old, and the bedding looked ancient. The bathroom towels were dingy, faded, and looked dirty. I’m sure they were clean, but I wouldn’t put towels like that out for guests in my own home. There are nice views, but the property needs serious care. The waterfall area didn’t feel like a real garden, with fake grass around it, and the pond was dirty and unappealing. There’s a lot of potential here, but in its current condition I can’t recommend it, especially for the price. We live about an hour away and even considered heading home after dinner at the Ojai Valley Inn. We decided to stick it out.