Bayshore Inn, occupancy for two adults, on Saturday night in November
When rating a hotel that is privately owned and not part of a corporation, it is difficult to determine how to rate the owner separately from his hotel. Let me use an analogy close to my heart. As a high school teacher in an urban school, I often have students who do not come from wealthy families. Their shoes are worn, their clothes are hand-me-downs, their backpacks show years of use. Yet, often their work is quality and meets my standards as a teacher. Now, am I grading the children and their appearance, or am I grading their work? In a school setting, I must learn to separate the child from his work.
With a hotel, however, I feel I must give two grades: one score for the appearance of the hotel, and one for the service. The hotel itself, on this weekend in 2016, gets a score of 3.5 (out of 5). The owner, Mayur Patel, gets a 4.5.
The hotel, like the clothes of some of my students, shows years of wear. It's an old hotel. The floor of the bedroom is half-tile, half-carpeting, carpeting that appears to date back to the 1970s. The bed, a lounge chair, and a table rest on the carpeting; the dresser and a refrigerator rest on the tile. Our carpet is worn and has a cigarette burn on my side of the bed, but it is as clean as it could be. All the furniture is old, but clean and functional. The bed is warm and comfortable.
The modern touches range from fair to very good. The wi-fi leaves much to be desired. (We were successful in accessing the wi-fi early in the evening; since then, I have seen only an endless spinning wheel struggling to reach the Internet.) Our television is a modern flat screen mounted on the wall facing the bed. There were maybe 60 stations on TWC. However, the remote control is semi-functional. All of the buttons work except for the on-off button. Like the good old days, we had to get up and turn the set on and off manually. Also, there is no closet, just a rack awkwardly placed above the dresser. The room had no telephone.
There are some good modern upgrades. The room is equipped with a microwave and a fair-sized refrigerator, both clean. The walls and ceiling have fresh paint. The ceiling has elegant molding and new, recessed lights. A brand-new air conditioning unit hangs on the back wall. The bathroom has been well-upgraded. The toilet and the sink are new, the tub and its tile are new, and the walls are clean and recently painted. The vanity has an unpainted, rustic look. (Here, when I say "unpainted," I am referring to the peeling paint appearance that makes me question whether the look is intentional or not.)
The owner, Mr. Patel, is a conscientious proprietor who is making gradual improvements on the hotel. At the time of our visit, some of the rooms at the far end of the hotel (24 units) were under renovation. There is no elevator access to the second floor. The stairwells need paint. Even the sidewalk and curb outside the hotel was under repair.
However, Mr. Patel was very attentive. He gave us Room 204, the room next to the stairwell where only one other room shares a wall. (The walls are thin. When the neighbors arrived late at night, I heard them talking through the bathroom wall.) When he saw our luggage, he summoned one of the workers to carry it up to the room for us. He called my cellphone after we settled in to ask if we needed anything. (My wife wanted another hand towel, but she did not say anything at the time.). When the television remote did not work, I called him, and he promptly came up to the room to try to fix it. During our conversations, Mr. Patel explained how he was making improvements to his hotel "one thing at a time," including his plan to pull up the carpeting and tile the bedroom floors. He made it clear that he wanted us to return to his hotel for future visits.
Bottom line: The Bayshore Inn is a fixer-upper in the process of being fixed. I paid $109 for a room that my wife valued at $70. In all fairness, some of the Yelpers claimed to see bedbugs and prostitutes: I saw no such things. The beds are clean and comfortable. Maybe it's because it is November, but the streets are too cold and dark for anyone to be walking the streets. read more