Surf City Inn and Suites

I’d stayed here a lot over the past two years because I liked it the first time and it’s affordable for much of the year, unlike most places in town. My opinion dropped each time until I decided I won’t stay again. Staff are friendly enough but nothing special. The pool and hot tub are in a small building in the parking lot, and people use them often, though I never did. After 10 PM, check-in is through a kiosk outside the office window, where someone on a screen, probably in another country, helps you. You can pay cash there, which is handy. They take a $100 incidental deposit. If you check out early enough, it’s returned through the same kiosk. Otherwise, be careful: they’ve kept most or all of mine several times. The housekeeper manager tells the front desk whether to charge for things. More than once I used their towels to soak up water from leaking sinks and was charged $100 for dirty towels. That’s so beyond okay, and I can’t fit the whole rant here. The location is close to the beach, river, downtown, and Boardwalk, which is nice, but it’s a sketchy part of town because of the affordable motels and the levee nearby. Be careful at night and park in the lot rather than on the street. I’ve lived in Santa Cruz for 30 years, so I’m not just being paranoid. The last straw is what you can see in my photos. I checked in at the kiosk, got to the room, and found the bathroom dirty, with towels everywhere and water in the tub. I asked for a different room. When I opened that door, cockroaches scurried into the shadows. I wasn’t even putting my things down there. The next room was dirty too, with food caked on the microwave, surfaces unwiped, and trash still in the can. The final room was fine. Then I noticed water under the bathroom sink. I used the towels to soak it up and left them there. At checkout the next morning, they charged my $100 deposit for the towels being dirty. After that whole mess, they charged me instead of apologizing for the inconvenience. I was so furious I finally had to leave this review. This place is sadly morally tainted. They’ve got their wires crossed. Where are they spending $100 on those crappy scratchy towels? I’m sick of being taken advantage of as a consumer. Businesses in this town need to learn customer service and basic human decency.

We arrived at 11:30 PM for an eight-night stay and had to check in using a Ring photo doorknob and kiosk. The first room was filthy, so we had to ask for another. They didn’t give us one until I showed the guy on the screen the photos I’d taken. In the next room there was a cockroach on the wall. It was midnight and I was exhausted, so we slept with the lights on. The next night we stayed at my daughter’s house, who lives in town. When we came back to the hotel in the morning, we were locked out of the room. I bought roach traps and put them out. The room was dirty overall: the floor hadn’t been swept before we moved in, the towels were stained, and there were holes in the walls. We slept at the hotel for three nights and stayed with my daughter the rest of the time. We used the pool twice, but the chlorine was overwhelming, and there was a cockroach on the indoor pool deck. We won’t stay there again.

The room wasn’t clean enough for most people once you started looking. I found a used Band-Aid under the covers of one bed and a used diaper in a trash can. With no ventilation, the shower curtain smelled of mildew, and the fridge smelled like rotten milk. After seeing all that, I didn’t trust walking barefoot, so I used a towel to scoot across the floor. It made clear just how dirty the floor was. They could easily do better.

The front desk person was so kind and made sure our four rooms were close together for our family trip. The rooms were clean and updated, and having the beds in separate rooms with TVs was great. We'd stay here again.