My sister and I stayed at the Eureka Inn from October 1st-5th while in town for the annual Redwood…read moreCoast Music Festival. We had such a wonderful experience during our visit last year that we were very much looking forward to returning. Unfortunately, this year's stay was a spectacular failure, featuring two major issues during our stay. Neither was handled remotely well.
Incident #1: Raining in the Room
On our first night, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of what I initially thought was rain. It wasn't raining outside. Our ceiling was leaking directly into our room. The carpet was drenched, and the leak was directly above our closet, where dirty brown water stained and ruined a significant portion of my sister's clothing.
Now, I understand that the Eureka Inn is an old building. I know that a historic property will not be without occasional maintenance issues. What I DO expect is for a hotel to take responsibility when one of those issues damages a guest's belongings and renders their room partially unusable. But apparently my expectations are too high. When my sister asked whether she could use a washing machine to try to salvage her clothing, she was told the hotel "didn't have one" and that she could walk down the street to the nearest laundromat. Like, what?!? Our room was leaking filthy water onto our belongings, and the proposed solution was essentially to hit the pavement and fix it ourselves, spending a few hours of our vacation hanging out at a laundromat?! Cool idea.
We were told we could move to a slightly larger room on the same floor the following day, but even that required effort on our part. We had to repeatedly follow up with front desk staff to find out what was happening with the room change. It became increasingly apparent that if we stopped asking, nothing was going to happen. No proactive communication. No sense of urgency. No apparent concern.
Incident #2: Money Vanished
So I left my wallet totally out in the open in our room. We had not requested housekeeping, so we had no reason to expect anyone would be entering. I acknowledge that leaving valuables out wasn't the smartest decision, and I take responsibility for that. However, I don't believe that means I should have to accept a troubling situation without expecting management to take it seriously.
On Saturday morning, I placed a fresh $100 bill in my wallet alongside another $100 bill. I rarely carry cash, which is precisely why I remember this detail so clearly. When I went to retrieve one of those bills to pick up our Chinese food on Saturday afternoon, both bills were gone. My wallet had not left the room. I cannot definitively establish who took the money, and I'm not going to make an accusation I cannot prove. What I can say is that $200 was missing from my wallet during our stay, under circumstances that warranted a serious conversation with management.
So I brought the issue to the front desk staff and they sent me to the General Manager. His response? He showed me a list of rooms that had requested housekeeping in order to "prove" to me that no one had gone in our room and informed me that "this has never happened before." And that was essentially it. "This has never happened before" is not an investigation. It is not reassurance and it is certainly not a resolution. No meaningful investigation communicated to me. No substantive explanation. No indication of what, if anything, could be done to look into the matter. I asked if perhaps he could check the cameras to see which staff members were on our floor and he said "we don't have cameras on the third and fourth floors". Greato. And, to be clear, I wasn't expecting the General Manager to pull $200 out of thin air. I was just expecting him to take a serious concern seriously.
We LOVED our stay last year. We returned here expecting another enjoyable visit and instead spent our time dealing with water pouring through the ceiling, clothing damaged by dirty water, a room change we had to repeatedly chase down, and $200 missing.
These are two separate incidents, but the underlying problem was remarkably consistent. When something went wrong, we were left to push for answers and solutions ourselves.
The building's age isn't the issue. Unexpected maintenance problems happen. What distinguishes a good stay from a bad one is how the staff responds when guests are affected. Basic communication, a sense of urgency, and a little genuine concern would have made a world of difference.
We won't be returning, and I would encourage anyone considering a stay to think carefully about how this hotel handles things when they go wrong.