While my friend Ben at One Mile At A Time struggled in Mykonos, I enjoyed a totally ordinary, drama-free hotel stay in Santa Barbara at Hyatt’s Mar Monte Hotel.
An Ordinary, Drama-Free Hotel Stay…What A Concept!
If you’ve missed Ben’s saga, and it is an epic saga, you should start here. And as much as I’ve greatly enjoyed (while being horrified) about how Marriott’s Aegon Mykonos treats its guests, I’m pleased to report another nice stay at the Mar Monte Hotel in Santa Barbara.
To celebrate the end of an educational milestone for my wife, I took my family to Santa Barbara over the weekend. We had free night certificates and I redeemed them prior to the Mar Monte moving from a Category 4 to Category 5 property. This particular redemption will be sadly missed, as the hotel is just 90 minutes from home but in a whole different world. Plus, paid rates can be high…they were over $450/night last weekend.
A brief rundown of the stay:
- I was warmly greeted at check-in, thanked for being a Globalist, and upgraded to an oceanview room with a balcony without asking.
- Parking is ostensibly valet only, but ample street parking is available
- My room was in the Santa Maria building, quite spacious, and did have a great ocean view
- We enjoyed going swimming and the jacuzzi is open again
- The beach across the street has a playground my children loved
- Fitness Center is by appointment only, but we easily reserved an hour block
- Breakfast remains only at Cafe Lido (the poolside restaurant) and the French Toast should be avoided, but everything else was tasty and the coffee was great.
- Costa, the hotel’s main restaurant, has re-opened for dinner only.
The biggest drama we had was that our Keurig in-room coffee machine broke. After quick call to reception a new one was delivered five minutes later. (Note to coffee aficionados: even Lavazza pods don’t save this dreadful excuse for coffee…)
And what I did not experience:
- Lying by front-desk associates about upgrades
- Slander from the hotel owners
- Power lines in the pool area
- Visible trash cans
- Personal attacks on the blog by hotel management
(read Ben’s piece for more context)
So yeah, a boring stay. Exactly what I was looking for. While the Duchess of Sussex was laboring at a nearby hospital, we were relaxing.
You can read my recent full review of this hotel here.
> Read More: Mar Monte Hotel Santa Barbara, Part Of Hyatt Unbound Collection Review
I read the “drama” that Ben encountered in Greece. It was horrible BUT Ben thinks that the world is a copy and paste of the US. No, it is not. I have been to Greece many times. Greek people are unique in a way that they have their own way of doing things. They are friendly but not gentle. They know how to bend the rules. I think if Marriott is a professional organization that hotel will have problems. However, I can probably assume that hotel is locally managed by some rich Greek guy that only uses the Marriott brand so although he should expect more from Marriott there will always be a touch of local culture that sometimes is frustrating. Same happens in Italy and other countries in Europe and not only with hotels. I rented cars from Avis and Hertz in Greece and Italy many times. I had the highest status with both companies which allowed me to have a guaranteed vehicle. That never happened. I was always given whatever car was available which were way smaller than the cars I had reserved and once had been in an accident and one of the doors could barely open. When I complained the guy from Hertz told me: take it or leave. What options did I have? None. Thus, do not expect to have the rules of American companies be followed everywhere. It is frustrating but it is usually the way it works.
I was actually at Mar Monte this weekend as well (after reading your previous review). The property was nice, but did you have any issues with housekeeping?
I got a pre-checkin offer to opt out of housekeeping in exchange for a bottle of wine. The offer seemed fair enough, but since we have an 8 month old I decided having dirty diapers marinating in the garbage bin of a tiny (~225 sq foot) room wasnt worth it…. Anyway housekeeping never came, and when we called the desk to inquire they had someone dropoff 2 clean towels outside the room (i.e. not what we asked for).
I’d have been more understanding of service cutbacks if they were a little more transparent, but I feel like by turning down the wine I should’ve gotten a clean room. Just finished stays at 2 other Hyatt properties and felt they both did a better job of managing expectations. The front desk people at Mar Monte werent rude by any means, but they just didnt seem to care about fixing a relatively simple issue.
In this case I tend to agree with Santastico. Yet the drama was fascinating nonetheless. No doubt that the hotel is egregious on many levels with the complete misrepresentations of the property on the whole being the most significant. The Beach Club stuff was, well, wow. With that, I also think there was a certain level of American entitlement in Ben expecting anything more than a common Southern European stubbornness in response. My own take is that the moment they canceled the SNA and clearly would not give a practical reason for it, I would have canceled the booking and gone elsewhere. Sometimes the best choice is simply to avoid what you can when possible. At the very least I would have checked out right away upon seeing the trash cans and beach. Should Ben have reported and blogged this, yes. Did it have to be so dramatic, well…I guess so given the amount of reaction it got, lol. Perhaps it’s my years of traveling in France that I learned to not escalate these things with hospitality providers as everyone just digs their heels in. Simply leave.
‘Little’ Augustine is growing up; he’ll be in high school in the blink of an eye.
It’s good you were able to redeem before the category change : $450 seems a bit much for what appears to be something very pleasant but hardly spectacular.
As for Ben and Lucky: the treatment by the hotel sounds dreadful and they deserved better. It’s unfortunate that the theatricality of the presentation of the story resulted in some of his readers posting fake/negative reviews on TA and elsewhere; that does little for the credibility of travel blogging, even though they didn’t endorse it ( but he does seem to attract a greater proportion of immature readers)
I love the location of this hotel, it’s near the quiet end of the beach. I wish it had a better restaurant, larger pool … and pet friendly restaurant patio, first world problems 🙂
@Matthew – Ben’s story would not be out of place in the US either. See FT for the endless ways Marriott is currently reneging on published benefits….SNAs, breakfast, 4pm check-out, etc. Just a low-ethics company these days.
That many have learned to accept bad service and truly horrible human behavior does not make the conduct acceptable. Perhaps if so many did not shrug and call it cultural differences, the conduct would be less common. Smug indifference is not morally superior. People are different in different ways but horrible treatment of others looks similar everywhere. Nobody should be a target of verbal harassment.
Your kids are too cute!