First, the good: the location is great, if you're not wedded to having an ocean view from your room. It's a small property (maybe 16 rooms?), and the distance from the parking lot to the steps over the dunes is a minute walk that passes a clean, pleasant pool. The room itself was fine: clean, if a bit utilitarian, but that's not a problem for me.
Now, the bad: Sometime in the not-so-recent past, from what I can tell, the motel was bought out by a property management company that operates off-site. There's supposed to be a site manager, but good luck running into him, especially in a moment when you might actually need something. I booked the room through Hotels.com, which offered no special directives on how check-in would work, so I expected the standard set-up. When my family and I arrived at the motel (after a 6-hour drive, with a 2-year-old in the car), showing up right at the 4 pm check-in time, the office was locked up tight: no employees in sight. I knocked on the door, wandered around. Another family in an SUV waved to me and said, "Good luck finding someone. You have to call the number on the door and wait forever, and they just told us they'd be happy to book us the room for [some exorbitant rate] a night." They told me they booked through Expedia. Flustered, I returned to my car to call and see what would happen, and as I got on my cell, the couple drove off, never to return, I presume. (We had another interaction like this the next day, and this time we were the ones who had to explain to the stressed and confused newcomers how the check-in would work.)
So I called the line for Kees Vacations. I was on hold for quite a while: 10 or 15 minutes, at least. At last a polite but patronizing representative picked up and told me, as if it were obvious, that I had to give them my name and I'd be given a room number and a door code. Call, she said, if you have a maintenance issue. Again, I want to emphasize that this process was never explained in the booking, and there were no instructions posted on the office door.
It wasn't clear from any of the materials in the room if we'd get a room cleaning or fresh towels during our stay, so we conserved our towels, carefully hanging them to dry after use. Well, the second day, a knock on the door: the elusive property manager. He asked me to give him an old door tag and handed me one that specified "Do not disturb" or "Please clean room," instructing me to hang it on the door if I wished to receive service. I thanked him. I collected all of our dirty towels and put them in a pile on the floor by the front door. Fifteen minutes later, my family and I left the room, put the tag on the door as instructed, and left for the afternoon.
When we returned 4 hours later, the room had not been serviced. My husband called Kees Vacations and again waited 10 or 15 minutes to talk to the same patronizing representative. She said that housekeeping lasted until 4:00 pm, but she'd send an email to the property manager to let him know we needed, at the least, fresh towels. He never came, of course.
One last note: the few instructions left on the room's refrigerator directed motel guests to strip their beds, pile up towels and linens by the door, and take their own garbage out to the property dumpsters. Afraid of getting some weird retroactive charge, we did did this, though it seems bizarre for a motel to require such a thing of its guests.
In sum, it seems to me that the new owners are trying to operate a motel like a vacation house or condo rental without disclosing to people who book the room that this is what they're getting. If we'd known not to expect the most basic motel amenities--checking in with a human being (and not having to wait 10-15 minutes to talk to a person on a phone), no fresh towels, no room cleaning--we'd have been able to plan accordingly and make the best of the situation (by preserving our towels, for instance). read more
