Hotel Solares

After a terrible stay at a nearby motel, this place felt amazing. The room was spacious and so thoroughly cleaned that the sheets and towels still smelled fresh, like laundry detergent. I don’t drink coffee, but liked having a personal coffee maker in the room. The balcony had a beautiful view. I’d definitely return.

This place is a little Santa Cruz hidden gem, and part of me would rather keep it that way. In the off-season, the price is hard to beat. The rooms are nice, the staff are lovely, and I like the surfer feel in the lobby. The exterior has also recently had a fresh coat of paint and looks much better. The neighborhood has improved a lot. On an earlier visit it felt seedy, with gunshots and police just outside the hotel. On my latest stay it was safe and quiet.

This was the worst vacation I’ve ever had, apart from the location. We had to leave the first room because its door and window were broken, which raised serious safety concerns. In the second room we found several small damaged items we assumed the hotel already knew about, including a cracked microwave. It shattered the first time we used it, and now we’re being held responsible for an appliance that was damaged before we arrived. They said they wouldn’t charge us for it “out of respect,” but now deny that any of this happened and claim there were no bedbugs. We repeatedly complained about the problems, but management did not properly address or resolve them. They offered to change the sheets and clean after we documented bedbugs and roaches with photos and videos and brought the insects to the front desk as proof. They wouldn’t change our room. Hot water was also unreliable for several consecutive days. After repeated complaints, it would come back for just 5-10 minutes before turning cold, forcing two of us to hurry through showers. We then had to call over and over, wait 30 minutes to more than an hour for staff to “turn it on,” and wait again for the water to heat. The problem was never permanently fixed. They even said the whole hotel was affected and offered another room, despite knowing it wouldn’t fix anything. The pool depth was also a concern. It seemed marked or advertised as about 5 feet, but my 6-foot boyfriend couldn’t touch the bottom in the section labeled 4 feet. I’d estimate the pool was 7-8 feet deep. That didn’t worry us too much, but families might be alarmed to let their kids jump into the deep end without knowing its actual depth. I don’t have kids, but many families and children were staying there.

My daughter spilled hot chocolate, and the manager tried to charge us $45 for the towels we used to wipe it up. They were old and threadbare, and he admitted nobody had even tried washing them before charging us. I challenged the fee and he got angry, yelled, and called me cheap. Earlier, my family had seen him pacing around the hotel yelling into his phone. When I asked for someone higher up, he wrote a number on a scrap of paper and said it was corporate. I called it, and his own phone rang. He ignored it and sent me to voicemail. I called again, his phone rang again, and when I asked if he’d given me his own number, he started yelling at me. At one point he pretended to answer a call while I tried the number again. Eventually he stopped answering questions, went into his office, and directed an embarrassed employee to charge me for the towels. The hotel also won’t clean your room unless you ask, and doesn’t tell you that. There are plenty of budget hotels in Santa Cruz, so stay somewhere else.