Days Inn Salinas Airport

We would give them zero if we could. All and all it was a terrible experience. We began our vacation by spending one night at the Days Inn in Salinas and from there continuing up the California Coast. Unfortunately, Days Inn made it a horrible start to our vacation.
Here is the story of why someone should never stay here:
First my wife and I arrive and there are two Asian ladies in the office who look on the computer and are not able to find our reservation. The other lady walks over to the computer and tells her that she is looking on the wrong day. After she finds the reservation she proceeds to ask us how much we paid for the room since we booked and paid in full the stay on
. We told her it was $ 94. She then proceeded to tell us for about 3 minutes how there was a mistake in the price and asked us if we would pay $ 20 more because normally the rooms go for $ 159. Well I’m sorry that you made that mistake but we already paid in full and I do not think that it is OK to try and extort more money from us because of a mistake that you made. We told her that we would not pay the extra money and asked if she would prefer we stay at a different motel for the night. Her reply was of course not. Well you could have fooled me. Then she took our credit card that we booked the room with and wrote down the information even after we said she could not charge us more for the room we already paid in full for.
After we get the room key (only one) we proceed to room 108 and find that the card does not open the door. We trek back to the office and the ladies seem surprised and one decides to follow us to the room to make sure we did it right. After a few more attempts she realizes that it was not our idiocy but rather the key did not work like we had told them. The lady then goes back to the office gets the master key and lets us in the room promising to return with a new key that should work. My wife and I wait in the room for 10 minutes before my wife volunteers to go to the office to find out where our new room key is. She finds the office lady just standing there talking with the other lady instead of getting us the new working key. When my wife asked she seemed surprised and then started to make the new key. Surprise, surprise the new key does not work either. We ask for a different room and their response was we are full but end up changing their mind and allowing us to move to another room where the key works. The only problem was that the new room was a complete down grade from the previous room. The floors were sticky, there was no hair dryer but a place where the hair dyer should have been, and hairs in the bath tube. We decide to just deal with it and hope our vacation would get better after that night.
The next morning we pack up our car to continue on our road trip vacation then head over to the office for the FREE continental breakfast. We knew that we only wanted to have a quick bite then get going on the road because our stay had been unwelcoming so far, thus we decide to grab a couple nutrigrain bars to eat in the car on the way to our next location a Motel 6 in Fort Bragg which was amazing. After my wife puts the bars in the car she comes back to have a bowl of cereal with me before we go. Out of nowhere the same lady who checked us in and asked for $ 20 more appears giving us one of the dirtiest looks I have ever seen. We both smiled at her and her scowl maintained it’s evil appearance. After our light breakfast we go up to her to check out and give her our one key and she begins to accuse us of having other people in our room that we brought food back to. That makes no sense considering we had just asked to check out.
Overall, this was the worst motel we had ever been in. Very unwelcoming, dirty, extorting money from us, and making accusations about us that were not true. We will never stay at another Days Inn again.

I’m writing this review from the Howard Johnson Salinas just five minutes away from the awful Days Inn. This after spending over an hour trying to get the room we already booked earlier that day through
. The manager refused to give us the room at the rate we paid because
takes a commission. Basically, the manager was using
to lure guests (the «airport» hotel is very out of the way) and then bait and switch. We were told either we pay extra for the room, or find another hotel. Reading reviews on this place, this is not the first time this Days Inn has done this. While spending an hour trying to sort this out, we declined to stay at this Days Inn after reading other reviews about the manager and the rooms. Avoid!

The worst experience… wish I can give them ZERO stars! Made a reservation directly on DAYS INN website 5 hours before my arrival. I received a confirmation email and even called the hotel that I would be a late check in after 11pm. They said no problem! Well I arrived with my wife at 1130pm and get buzzed into the front office. The owner tells me when we get there that she has no rooms for me and they are waiting and holding the room for someone else. Of course after driving 6 hours, you can imagine how upset we are. I show her the reservation confirmation email and she tells me that they are overbooked and she could not give me the room they are holding. I show her the email confirmation which she ignores and tells me that is not possible. After arguing and going back and forth I give up and decide to just try to find another place near by. But before I leave, I ask her and confirm that my credit card was not charged. She says no it was not and does not see my name on any list despite myself having the confirmation letter of my reservation.
Well 20 days later (today), I receive my credit card bill and I indeed was charged for the room.
I called the hotel up tonight and spoke with the same owner from that night and she told me I was charged because I «no showed»!!! She denies anything of me showing up and having a reservation since her records show that there indeed was a room available.
Forget staying here… horrible management and book keeping especially in this day of computers. I called my credit card company at this time to investigate and to suspend the payment!!! Don’t even waste your time looking at this place!!!

DO NOT STAY HERE!!! If it were possible to give this place no stars. I would be all over that. The toilet seat had a burn mark from what I have no idea, the room smelled like it hadn’t been opened in months, there were holes in the curtain and when attempting to cancel my reservation the employee told me management wouldn’t let me. I asked to speak to management and she said she was it. Then when calling corporate they said I can make a formal complaint but it would be sent to owner and upper management then named the same employee/​management/​owner… shady shady business! DO NOT STAY HERE!!!

One star seems like a reward for good service for this place.
All in all, I would say this was the worst place I ever stayed in: it hit the trifecta of dirty, immensely unpleasant, and expensive.
To mention only a few of the amenities of this establishment not apparent on any Days Inn website,
1. You come alone, you leave with an entourage (of bugs, we had at least two types in our original room and given the bites I have, there may have been a third in the room we moved to);
2. You get the full-​on experience of oil-​drilling in terms of noise — spitting distance from the freeway, a fridge that seems to come alive as a chain-​saw, but only intermittently, and (in our case, drinking) neighbors whose every breath you can hear. My boyfriend couldn’t sleep all night.
3. You don’t need to worry about the dirt in the carpets since they are dark, and only some lights work (in our original room, very few).
4. You cannot be distracted by normal annoyances such as wifi internet (not working), phone (not present), or TV (a vintage piece that produces some sort of blinking images).
I have actually stayed in worse establishments in terms of pure quality, mostly in developing countries. But none that benefitted from the charms of the front desk lady. She lied to us with a straight face. Offered us a discount to move to a bug-​free but smaller room and backed out on that discount the day after. Not in the most elegant manner. She also tried to mis-​calculate the taxes on the room in a fairly ridiculous way. The hotel was also very far from dirt cheap (though, as I mentioned, the «dirt» part was taken care of). We’ve stayed in rather distinguished hotels in Manhattan for around the same price.
I would never stay here again. I would prefer to go camping on the lovely camp-​grounds five miles away. Or drive a few extra miles and take advantage of the hygiene and civility our privileged world offers in the form of other hotels.

If you value your sanity and your health, skip this wretched place. I cannot believe Days Inn allows its name on the hotel. In fact, if this place is representative of Days Inns more generally, I will make it a point never again to book a room in any of its franchises.
Dare I go into detail? Dare I dredge up the dank memories of that dismal room? Dare I risk turning your stomach with the whole sordid affair?
Perhaps I do. Perhaps if I might prevent one of my fellow travelers from making the same mistake my companion and I did, it will be worth the effort.
«Once upon a midnight dreary …» — Poe’s tale is actually too romantic for for this hotel, though the tone is about right. Our room was so decrepit that we immediately went looking for unmentionable domestic insects upon our late evening arrival. The carpeted floors appeared as if they hadn’t been vacuumed in months. The room had no phone, a broken refrigerator, and the main light socket was without bulb. The Wifi promised in the amenities didn’t work at all, despite many attempts with different kinds of devices.
«While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping … «– You might have a look at the map to notice carefully where the hotel is situated. It bills itself as an «airport» hotel, a sleight-​of-​hand so astounding as to amaze even a Las Vegas native. It should instead be called a «freeway» hotel, as it might have been designed intentionally to be as close as possible to US 101. If you like the sonorous sounds of eighteen-​wheeled Peterbilts sailing across your ceiling, you’ll be seduced by this hotel. For the rest, the only runway that matters is the running away you should do to get as much daylight or darkness between you and it.
«Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing …» — The span between wake and sleep is mostly bridged easily, but sometimes one finds the chasm wider when the monsters under the bed threaten. Or, alternately, it might be that skin-​itching sensation that you’ve just settled into a lair of creepy-​crawly things. We found ants in the bathroom and flies in the closet. The dim light cast by the rickety lamps didn’t allow us to see more, but as I tried to drift to sleep, I can assure you that I wasn’t counting sheep. I was, instead, hoping that I didn’t wake up in the morning covered in …
«Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!» — A hotel’s thousand flaws can be forgiven when that soothing balm of customer service is applied. We didn’t expect a Ritz when staying at a Days Inn. We did expect a square deal and fair treatment. But management left the impression of being double-​dealing and cheap. When we eventually complained about our room, we were offered a 15 percent discount and a new room. Fine, we told ourselves, at least they recognize the problem and want to make it up. We struck that deal at 10PM. But at 8AM, after we had survived the night, it seemed we had made a deal with a devil, the terms all different. It had changed to five percent off, and that only because we had taken a smaller room. Actually, the details of the deal we thought we had don’t matter. What matters is that «Kim,» the so-​called manager, was insistent on scratching out whatever little amount extra she could from us, even though we had a miserable night. This is not the hallmark of hospitality, nor the proper métier of an innkeeper. This is the hallmark of a shyster and a skinflint.
«Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’» — If it isn’t clear by now, I’ll just make it explicit that we never intend to return to this horrid place. I’ve stayed in cleaner tents in the wilds of Africa, and had better nights’ sleep on airplane coach seats. If you really must stay in the area and no other hotels are available, consider the Laguna Seca campground. Seriously. Otherwise, Santa Cruz is just an hour away, and San Jose a bit beyond that. You’ll do yourself a favor.

Worst management ever… when I stayed in this hotel room I found somebody hair on the towels and other places in the room and I just barely backed inside the room… lucky for me I carry my own towels all the time cause god knows where those towels have been at… lol…anyways about the hair I was grossed out by it. but i was like whatever about it then I went to the restroom to go Number 1 and when I flushed the toilet I heard this weird sound that didn’t stop so after 15 mins I tried flushing the toilet again to see if the sound would stop… but then the toilet starting over floating with water so I rushed out to the managers office to let them know about the water in the carpet and the lady was making it seem like it was my fault I told her there is something wrong with the toilet… so I told her to switch me rooms and she kept on giving me attitude and she kept on saying they might charge me for the water over floating I told her ass if she does I will sue her dumb ass… dumb Asian lady so I move to a different room so the room was a lot better toilet worked good with no loud sounds… so I tried using their free internet and it was So Slow and it would take 10 minutes to load up a page I tried using my iPad and laptop and same crap so I told the lady if they can do anything for the internet to go faster and she was telling me everything works good and that nobody else has told her about any internet problems that everybody says it’s fast… so somebody else that was staying in the hotel told the lady that the internet is so slow and he had to work from his hotel room and if he didn’t have good internet signal he wouldn’t be able too… so they lady just walked away like the lame ass person she and didn’t do nothing about it. PLEASE DO NOT STAY HERE AND SAVE YOURSELF THE HEADACHE AND THE FACT YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS DUMB MANAGEMENT… the rooms are not worth what you pay a night for it

The worst place I have ever stayed in. it was filthy. The floor smelled like urine. The lady at the front counter is a nightmare. Not to mention this is a truck stop motel and I paid 250.00 a night since an event was in town of Monterey. They in turn accused my husband and I of smoking and charged a 250.00 charge. It is a complete joke and they are crooks. Un real!

I booked this room for an overnight business trip. Although the room is outdated and old, it was a good size and clean. It had a microwave, fridge and coffee maker all of which worked just fine. I checked thoroughly for bed bugs and did not find a single critter. There is a Jack in the Box and Denny’s across the street which was very convenient. The bed and pillows weren’t bad and the wifi was okay. My only complaint is that it is over priced. I payed $ 95. booking through
However I think this room is probably only worth about $ 65 due to its age and the fact that it is pretty outdated. Overall it was a pleasant stay and I would stay again.

Sucky service– dirty out of date rooms. Cigarette stink in a non smoking room. CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS and the lady behind the desk that can barely speak English is a MONGOL!!! Save your time and skip this place!

Horrible place. I booked a last minute hotel for Labor day weekend through price line. Granted, when you book on price line you don’t expect anything fancy and I wasn’t. But I was traveling with my mom and my two kids and was hoping that they’d either give me a two queen bed room, or at least a roller bed, which most hotels provide with no problem at all. However, I was told, NO, NO, NO. It was my problem for booking on price line and they had only ONE roller bed, and they already lent it. No apologies, no sympathy, purely, oops, too bad. The older woman who claimed herself as the manager had no manners, was screaming at me with crazy hand gestures, and even threatened to call the police! For what?! A guest who is requesting a roller bed? Overall very, very unpleasant experience.
I’d say if you consider customer service as of some value to you stay away from this place. They don’t care about their customers and just want to take your money. Respect yourself, and stay at a different place.

I booked rooms here for my family members who were visiting for the summer. Since Monterey is so expensive, I decided to book them a room here. It is right off the freeway so my family easily found the location and found that it was quiet and clean. They enjoyed their stay and said that the staff was friendly. Since the room stay prices were moderate, I will definitely use this hotel for future family events.

Service: I didn’t personally check-​in, my husband did, and he said the lady at the front desk was very helpful and kind. The vending machine was out of order.
Room: The room was clean and easily accessible from the parking spot in front of it. Lugging the baby bed into the room was easy peasy. The bathroom was decent and very clean for a motel, the room had a hair dryer, a coffee maker, fridge, microwave, and decent sized TV. The bed was comfy enough. I have nothing to complain about in the room.
Food: There was a continental breakfast, but we didn’t notice until after we got Denny’s from across the street. The Denny’s was really odd. It had a BAR and a Billiards/​Cocktail Lounge. Very odd. But they had excellent service and food and I would recommend going there if you stop here for the night.
Overall: The room was nice, people were nice, it was clean and I would stop here overnight again if I had to stop in Salinas. There was no shady activity or people around. And it had easy access to the freeway and gas stations/​food.
Room Tip: Get a lower level room, there is no elevator.

Single room @ $ 63/​night. Very nice room. Quiet, too.

Well. we were headed to Monterey but decided to stay in Salinas because it was cheaper. Turns out we got this place for way cheap and it was a pretty decent place. The room was nice and clean and it was quiet. A lot of bikers and hikers stop here to stay the night so they all go to bed early. The only bad part is that there is pretty much nothing in Salinas. But I recommend staying here if you’re stopping by.