We booked the Hotel Whitcomb in Downtown San Francisco through Hotwire. If you find a hotel with 3.5 stars and under $100 through Hotwire, you will be booked in Hotel Whitcomb.
If you have never been to San Francisco, be prepared for the neighbourhood you are entering – the area known as the Tenderloin. The area has an overwhelming population of aggressive homeless people. At one point, a homeless woman was forcefully escorted out of the hotel lobby for harassing guests. The parking was also difficult in this neighbourhood. We parked in a nearby lot due to the expensive hotel valet parking rates ($35 per evening). We were advised by parking attendant not to leave any valuables in our car and signs warned us that we were parking at our own risk. is hotel through Hotwire. If you
We had previously read that there were mice in the room but we figured that those were isolated incidents. Low and behold, the first thing that we saw when we put our bags down was a mouse run across our bags. We called down to notify the hotel staff of the incident and they assured us that someone would be coming to our room to investigate the incident immediately. The hotel staff acted surprised when we told them of the incident. After asking for our room number, they later admitted that several guests have complained about rodents in the room in the past several months.
20 minutes later, not hotel staff had come to our room. We called to speak with the Hotel Manager Kozi. When we told Kozi about the incident, he offered to move us to a different room but because there was no way of knowing if the rodent problem was widespread, we didn’t want to risk it. When we told the hotel manager, he assured us that the hotel did not have a rodent infestation and this was an isolated incident. However, upon leaving our room, we found mouse poison traps all over the hotel (in case you don’t believe us, see Photograph 1). Despite telling the manager this, he refused to acknowledge that they had a problem and insisted that the hotel was clean and rodent free.
Initially, he refused to give us any compensation for the room and insisted that by offering us another hotel room, he was providing us with more service than other Hotel Managers would have. He did eventually concede and issue us a full refund on our room through Hotwire.
This is how we spent our first evening in San Francisco. By 6pm, we were left in a dangerous neighbourhood, in a city that we had never been to, with no hotel. Once we returned from our trip, we called Hotwire and they were shocked of the experience. They told us that they would report this to their senior managers and have the hotel removed from their site, pending a further investigation.
Hopefully, our experience has prevented others from being fooled into booking this “3.5” Hotel in Downtown San Francisco. If you would like another hotel, we recommend staying at the Hyatt Regency near the airport.
To summarize:
1. Definite rodent infestation
2. Aggressive homeless population near hotel. It was shocking and worse than you would expect.
3. Staff is fully aware of the area and condition of the hotel, yet pretend or are instructed to act oblivious to the situation.
4. Avoid at all costs on Hotwire – 3.5 stars under $100 (If the hotel has not yet been removed).
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