Just got back from this hotel. In summary, we tried to book hotels pretty late in the game and all hotels in the city of Monterey were booked, and those that were not were at outrageous price, one being $460 a night. Anyhow, we thought we were lucky to find one for $170 a night and still having room available. In short, the people who work there was a mixture of nice to very rude. It is not a consistent or trained service like you might expect to find from Ritz Carlton, think of it was management of some apartments.
The place is very old quality material, retro very old carpets, old wooden looking style doors, etc... the place smelled like animal pee in the bathroom, but the worst part was the night we checked in, there was no toothpaste in the bathroom. I called service expecting them to have plenty of stock of them in storage, but the lady was rude and searched for a few mins and just said sorry she doesnt know where to get any and places to buy them are closed and she told me most people bring their own toothpaste (a rude remark amongst many other rude remarks). I was very stressed because in all my life, all hotels always had toothpaste, so my girlfriend and I brushed our teeth with water and now the next morning we have to go out of our way to buy toothpaste and come back because we wanted to stay in to relax... that was part of "vacationing", and to stop our usual always on the go habits.
Well fortunately in the morning, it was a diff lady and the lady was super nice and said she knew where it was stocked, gave us toothpaste, saved us a trip of going out and back in an neighborhood we have no idea about... problem solved, unnecessary stress considering this is suppose to be vacation and we are paying for some "care" in a sense, at the least, fully stock bathroom.
Anyhow, a lot of things were pretty bad, the shower curtains would keep flying in to you as if your body was attracting it with friction, the bed is pretty lame, it looks clean, but my home bed is not even fancy and so much better.
The NICE thing is the fireplace was good, we used that and it was nice...
They serve breakfast, which is all costco bread , bagels, etc.. that was OK. Coffee, cheap juice, cheap everything possible. But we arent picky eaters, so bread in morning was great...
the funny thing they started running out of enough food to serve everyone... and people were complaining to the desk lady about it, and the desk lady was just clueless to how to solve this problem.
It appears, the people that work there just simply pick up phones, assist with info, and put out whatever supply has been provided ot them (i.e. breakfast) from the owner of the hotel but they dont manage the food so if it runs out, its cuase the owner didnt provide the hotel enough food to begin with. We didnt blame the kind lady at the desk in the morning as she was saying how she hates the hotel herself jokingly.
The pool is nice and heated, hot tub is nice and works. That was a pleasant experience...
On the way out, we ran into a diff receptionist (it seems they switch daily basis) and we asked for Acquarium tickets, she gave us student discounts even though we werent and was super nice in information. She was the same one that knew where the toothpaste was and was just a sweet old lady.. so staying in that cheap hotel had some blessings in it, such as discounted tickets.
When we arrived at the Acquarium, there was a HUGE line waiting to by tickets, we were so lucky cause we already had them, we could walk right in without any wait!
Anyhow, I could go on listing how poor quality the hotel is but its kind of endless, and at the least, it had some good qualities about it and some blessings came out of it all.
A lesson learned to myself is to book your hotels in advacne so all the good ones arent full, you get what you pay for, so since we vcation very little, from now on, no more cheap hotels, or cheap anything.... and final lesson, never come back to Best Resort Monarch.