Surfer Beach Hotel

200 for a night… great beach view, and pool view if you do not get placed in the corner. you also have to pay about 20 for parking… and the room is not much better then a dorm room.
I checked in a bit late as i was meeting a friend who was also staying there. So obviously seeing another room was going to happen. Their room had all the amenities… microwave, couch, etc My room had a portable air conditioner that made a massive amount of noise, was next to the laundry room and elevator.
After checking in, dropped of my stuff at the room and hung out with my friend until about 2 am. Came back to the room to all this racket and was so tired to go complain to the front desk. the following morning, explained the frustration with the secretary (Front desk clerk) and the manager. His response was «am i supposed to tell everyone the bad things about the hotel?» no but maybe informing the guest that there is a mobile air conditioner in the room could have been a good idea. noise does affect people differently. Just his arrogant response was amazingly rude
None of the hotels along the strip on the beach look much better then a motel… so you are paying for location. but there is no reason for such arrogance from the management

There is no air conditioning in the room, so it gets super humid VERY quickly. No fan in the bathroom, just a little window to open for air which is quite embarrassing considering if someone walks by while you are going #2… View wasn’t the best, just a bunch of air conditioning units in the way. Wasn’t too noisy though, which was great !

** ME LODGE BETTER ONE DAY **
The Surfer Beach Hotel appeared to be a renovated mid-​century motel. The outside of the property, including the room entrances facing the parking lot, were dingy and unkempt. The minimally renovated standard room, with two queen beds, was small. The on-​line reservation details read, «Windows open to ocean view.» That statement may have been true, pending the room’s height or position of the property’s three-​sided building. Guests may be forced to stand on their toes or lean out of their balconies in order to get a glimpse of the ocean from their rooms. A chief complaint was the intense exhaust coming from the smoke stack of the onsite diner below (from 7a.m. until 11:00p.m.). This prevented any chance of allowing a fresh ocean breeze through the room’s opened window. Overall, The Surfer Beach Hotel’s location may be the only reason for its high-​priced room rates and daily parking fees. My experience staying at The Surfer Beach Hotel was not unlike staying at a two-​star motel.

Keith and Angelica was amazing. Every room has a view. Our room had a terrific jacuzzi. Will come again

As always… love this place and have been staying there for the last 20 years. Always a great experience. Just spent a night there to celebrate our new retired lifestyle. They never disappoint.

Great location, my family and I stay here a few times a month easy access to the beach small quiet property … Now some tips if you are looking to stay here
1. Call direct instead of booking through an online site … A few times now i have booked my room on price line and the in house rate was cheaper.
2. Parking spots are mainly for compact vehicles there are 3 or 4 that can accommodate full size.
3. When available pay the extra for a upper floor northwest corner room … Best view of the beach.
4 dont get a room on the south end there is a restaurant with great food and an exhaust fan louder than a jet engine taking off that runs from 4am to 11pm that will lill your ocean sounds and is really annoying
5. Most of the upper rooms have the ocean view and a nice balcony … The ground floor rooms are easy access to ever thing but no view and people constantly walking by looking in your room
6. There is a great area to the east of the parking lot with amazing pizza, a little market and liquor store
7. Most important … Dont complain … They dont really care you will get a fake apology … Learned this when i discovered the restaurant exhaust fan issue .
8. Check in is at 4, but if your lucky you may be able to check in early if they have a room available.
9. Spring for the junior suite … It is allot better than a standard room with AC a fridge and couch
10. In closing i gave 4 stars it is an older property with a great location and worth the price if you are lucky to get a room with a view and no restaurant noise

This is a great place! Reasonably priced, clean, comfy, and awesome location! It’s right on the beach and next to a great restaurant. The staff is very helpful and they work hard to make sure you have everything you need to be comfortable and enjoy your stay.

Bad hotel. You are it even allowed to park to pick up tenants! Go to another place in PB, there are many options.

The Surfer beach hotel really was a great price for being right on the ocean. The front desk staff was very friendly and our room king beach side room looked exactly like the picture. The dogs were allowed, but warning they are not allowed in the room unattended so make sure they are medicated or quiet. The hotel is walking distance from a pizza/​food joint in the parking lot, as well as a liquor store on the corner. warning. .like alot of California hotels, there is no A. C. BUT THEY PROVIDE A FLOOR FAN. we went in Dec so it was 65 all day

Stayed here one night. The view was nice but in the summer it is hot.
This motel does not have air conditioning in the rooms. And in southern California during the summer this is a must.
I will never stay here again during hot weather.
The pool is small and sits right next to a restaurant which seems a little uncomfortable as far as privacy goes.
The front desk is also small and seems to only employ one clerk at a time. We had to wait 20 minutes to check in even thought we had reservations.

Great location. Parking is 15 bucks. Comfy bed. Right next to the sand and the bars. Very affordable.

horrible … dirty … noisy … smelly
if you haven’t been to san diego and been to the beach do not come
and if you have to stay on the beach do not stay at the surfer beach
rooms small … dirty … no desk … no chairs … linen wrinkled … all rooms over look a restaurants roof where the noise of the air conditioners drown out the sounds of the surf
even though we shortened our stay they over charged our credit card
first of all the beach area if filthy … homeless peoples beach … filled with little shops … the walk is dirty … the beach is dirty
not a vacation destiny
the worst part of our vacation …

The Surfer Beach Hotel is set right on Pacific Beach. It’s an amazing location with nothing but the ocean-​front walking path between you and the sand. Nice!
Pros —
Great location, with much shopping, dining and activities within walking distance.
Off-​street parking (for a fee)
Extremely friendly and helpful front desk staff
Nice pool and sun deck area with dining tables
Safe and quiet location
100% Non-​Smoking hotel
Cons —
The A/​C units that are «front & center» on top of the World Famous restaurant. Be sure to request a Full Ocean View room, because if you’re on anything but the 4^th floor your view will be blocked by the lattice-​covered air conditioners. And sadly, they’re loud and run constantly. I don’t know what they can do about this, but IMO it really takes away from the beautiful view and peacefulness of being right on the beach.
Housekeeping could be better. The top of the microwave in my room was not dusted throughout my entire 5 day stay, and who knows how long before I arrived. Although the housekeeping carts have a vacuum on them, it’s not used. I witnessed this first-​hand. Not in my room, and from what I could hear, not in anyone else’s room, either. How well could they have cleaned the tub if my prior day’s washcloth was still in the corner of the tub rim where I’d left it? There’s no AC in any of the rooms and for the most part, that’s fine. I did find a tower fan in the closet. If that’s all the air circulation you’re going to provide, at least clean it every so often. It’s a shame that they don’t care more about basic cleaning.
And please put a FITTED sheet on the mattress. Sleeping on a loose bottom sheet is not fun.
The Room. I was upgraded to Jr. Suite on the 4^th floor because the room they wanted to give me was on the 3^rd floor directly behind the aforementioned AC Units. That’s not the view I wanted, or requested, for my week in San Diego! The room had 2 dressers, a King «pillow top» bed, wet bar with mini-​fridge, microwave and coffeemaker, and a «pleather» pull-​out couch. Worst fabric choice ever in a warm and humid environment. What the room did not have was any sort of table where you could eat, read or write. There are black-​out curtains on the front window, but no shear curtains, so unless I wanted to come «eye to eye» with people passing by my room, the full curtains stayed shut, thereby blocking any breeze and cross-​flow I might get by having the windows open. It’s a simple addition that would make such a huge difference. And lastly, it’s 2015. Please don’t make me have to unplug things behind furniture in order to have the use of an accessible outlet for my electronics.
Misc. Observations. There’s no phone book or hotel-​provided information on nearby restaurants or stores, so unless I passed it on foot or by driving by, I had no idea what was close by. Most hotel rooms comes with a small binder of where things are on the property, what’s nearby, local attractions, etc, etc. Not this one.
On my last night I was awakened by cigarette smoke. It was awful. I had the balcony door open for air circulation which left my room smelling of smoke. The next morning I asked at the front desk if the hotel was a non-​smoking hotel. I was told yes and that each guest acknowledges this on the paperwork they sign upon arrival. Ok, but where are the signs? There are no No Smoking signs in or on the door of any room, or in the lobby area! I was glad to have only encountered this on the last night of my stay, but they really do need signage. Street parking is available, but hard to come by unless you’re very lucky or very patient about waiting for a spot to open up.
Overall the Surfer Beach Hotel is not bad as beach lodging goes. The location cannot be beat, there’s a lot you can walk to, and there’s lots to do in the area. But it could definitely use a paint job and some «attention to detail» (thorough cleaning of rooms, helpful info in rooms, etc) to bring it up to the standard of other hotels in the area.
***It’s now late September. Every so often I’ll check back to see if the manager has left any comments about my review, as they did for several others. I don’t know if they think ignoring it will make this any less true, or if they actually think it’s not true? For as much as I’d like for my claims of poor housekeeping and views to not be true, unfortunately they are.

well. Location is great but that is where it stops. The Hotel is overpriced for the quality ($ 275) plus $ 15 for parking and we didn’t even have a Beach View. We saw the back parking lot. No Air conditioning. Small Box fan (that was filthy) to help circulate the air. TV was terrible quality and had poor reception. Carpet felt (and was in fact) absolutely disgusting. I was afraid to use the bed linens or pillows.
The employees were nice and helpful but one of the maintenance kids let a broom fall from the upper floor and it hit the roof of our car causing a minor dent. He felt awful and I didn’t want him to loose his job so we didn’t say anything. Luckily were were only there for one night but I would have gladly paid more for a quality hotel and would never recommend this place to anyone.

There are plenty of options put there. Do your research! don’t let the pictures fool you! … We stayed at this hotel because of the location. But boy, do they take advantage of that! When we checked it, the lady at the front acted like we were bothering her. She told us that the room that we booked (king size w/​pool view) wasn’t available, so she «upgraded» us into a Junior Suite. Yeah! Right! The room was horrible, it had the view of the dumpster, no balcony, barely any sunlight. It looked like no one had been in it for months. We came back to the desk to see if we could switch room. (Different lady was working), All of a sudden, a room that we booked was available. It was a corner room, super small near the pool, no windows just the sliding doors to the pool. (Compare to other rooms with large windows) but whatever, we took it. Then there’s a parking, the same lady (@check in) told us, we had to pay for parking. WHAT??? I said, but it’s the hotel parking lot, she said yeah, $ 15 a day to park here. No explanations, no apologies!
The lady at our check in may have had a bad day, but she shouldn’t take it out on the guests. The rooms, or at least the ones we had seen, need some remodeling & cleaning. The carpet was so dirty, bottom of our feet were black from walking on it. Most beach hotels I’ve been to, they have the tile floors.
Anyway, I doubt it we would go back.

Location is not always everything. That’s the only perk this place had.
The pictures online were a little deceiving, price was way out of range for what it’s worth, room wash very dirty (our feet turned black and we had to wear our shoes at all times), in the two night we stayed here only the bathroom was «cleaned», dirty towels, stained sheets, two hair balls, bathroom floor left our feet sticky, people walking by could look right into the bathroom… let’s just saw we felt dirty staying here. The place wasn’t kept up well at all. Our balcony even had cigarette butts and ashes on the ground and trash left outside.
I will never stay here again. I would rather stay a few blocks inland than stay here.
Gross.

The staff, especially Daniel was very helpful getting us a sea view room.
If you don’t book on forehand, and walk inn. They are able to knock the price down for you.
Pretty old hotel, but you pay all for location. And a plus on the room is definitely the sea view, as well the jet tub in the room.

Was worth the average $ 200/​night simply because you are literally on the beach, something not as common in San Diego as it is in Miami. However, rooms do not have AC. If you want the ocean breeze, you must get a full ocean view and not the pool view. We were told we had partial ocean… From outside the room, not inside. Jr. Suite has a small fridge and microwave, convenient.

I have stayed here 3 times in the past 6 months. It’s right on the beach, close to everything. I think it’s the best location ever. The rates are very reasonable! The restaurants attached to the hotel is also very good! I honestly don’t have anything bad to say about this hotel. I highly recommend it to anyone vacationing in PB!

Yes it’s not luxury hotel. However, it’s not priced as a luxury hotel. Nor does it pretend to be. The staff is extremely friendly and helpful. They accept pets. It’s right on the beach. Seriously, this place is a great find for the unpretentious!