I lived in Arcata for many years and have visited a lot in the last 25 and always have chosen to stay at the Hotel Arcata mainly because of its central location and the claw foot bathtubs. Unfortunately, due to my most recent experience being so awful, I will never return and I also strongly urge you to find another option for yourself.
To start I had booked a room for my friend and I for 3 nights. It was a room with a queen bed and an office space which they say on their own website there's room for a rollaway bed. I made sure to contact the hotel the morning of our arrival and requested a rollaway bed. We arrived that evening and checked in without a hitch. I'm well familiar with the challenging parking situation and that the plaza gets a bit rowdy so those things weren't an issue for us. When we get to the room there is no rollaway, ok, a bit annoying but the young woman at the front desk was super nice and told us she would get it and set it up. Cool. We went to get some food at Don's and I was looking forward to taking a nice hot bath when we returned. When I turned on the hot water I got only cold, I tried running sink trying to get it but the sink wouldn't drain properly so I kept having to turn it off. Back to the tub, I ran it for an excessively long amount of time and still no hot water so I gave up and retired to my rollaway bed. The one they provided me must have previously been a trampoline for a caffeinated 5 year old, it was shaped weird and very uncomfortable and I felt like I was in a taco. Also the boilers (aka radiators) made crazy sounds all night and while we went to bed freezing we both woke up in the middle of the night to an extremely uncomfortably hot situation. Even with all this, we didn't complain and we're going to sit out our three day stay. However, in the early afternoon of the third day while I was sleeping, my friend who has breast cancer, was preparing some marijuana cigarettes for us to enjoy later that day, unfortunately she needed a plunger for the toilet and she called the front the man who arrived was not friendly at all, she told him she would do the plunging (since I was sleeping on the rollaway right next to the bathroom) and he abruptly informed her that if we got caught smoking weed, we would be charged $500. She told him ok. Once again, we were NOT smoking weed, we had purchased some locally and also had devices to partake of it. I guess the man, we'll call him Charles, saw or smelled something and just assumed because less than 10 minutes later we got a phone call from the front desk telling us that we will not be charged, but we had one hour to vacate the premises. I asked to speak to the manager, named Sherri and she was supposedly unavailable for that entire hour while we now had to pack up all of our stuff and find a new place and also wait out the fact that this happened before standard check in times so we had our entire car packed back up and had to wait over an hour before we could check into our new (much better) location at an Airbnb 2 blocks away. We also had reservations at Larapin Café for 5 o'clock, but since this happened at around two, it left us not enough time and so we had to reschedule our dinner reservation which was very inconvenient because we were also attending an event I had paid for at Richards Goat Tavern which we now had to miss in favor of our dinner reservation.
Pretty unbelievable seeing as the hotel is located in Arcata and its reputation for the wacky Tabaccy... also the cherry on top being that upon walking out of the establishment we were greeted by a massive cloud of pot smoke lol.
I would've welcomed an adult conversation with either Charles or Sherri but apparently both of them are cowards who would rather let the front desk people do their dirty work. Also worth mentioning is Charles brings his daughter to work and allows her to roll full body down the ONLY staircase as people are trying to come and go. I hope his low wage position is worth him ruining someone's plans without a reason. As for Sherri, I invite you to read the many negative reviews she has received via google and how unprofessionally she responds to them.
BUT, If you like cold showers, no refrigerator, no hair dryer, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, noisy neighbors, being aggressively panhandled, the smell of weed and rude management, the Hotel Arcata is definitely your place. read more