Stayed here for 3 nights as part of a 2-week trip to SF. This hotel has some very good aspects: it's close to the pier, so there's no hills to climb. However, it's a bit too far to walk to Union Square. (We stayed on California St for the rest of our trip, which was walkable for both F.Wharf and U.Square.)
The staff was very professional. Breakfast in Knuckles (which is nice room, with a trendy-ish bar; there's also cool wooden beams on the ceiling) is table-service or buffet at 18dollars for fairly good food. The front desk and concierge area is nicely decorated. The pool is fine and the area gets plenty of sun, but the pool water dried out our skin more than usual! (not sure what's going on with that.) The fitness centre is very good: treadmills, bikes and cross-trainers (all with TVs); weights, drinking water, sanitising wipes, cold towels, dry towels, earphones.
The layout of the hotel is extremely confusing: you'll find yourself getting lost along the maze of green (read: 'puke-green' walls and brown carpets) hallways to find your room. In fact, the decor on all floors (except the lobby) is absolutely depressing (seriously!!) and there's no natural, and very dull artificial, light in the hallways. The decor in the rooms is not much better - they're a sad grey, with brown carpet. Let's just say, you won't look forward to coming home to your room.
Toilet and shower, but no bath; the toilet doors are a bit weird and don't fully close; there's also no fan, so you may need to de-fog the mirror with your hair dryer. You'll also hear everything in the toilet from the room! Nice flatscreen TV, 2 phones and a safe. Comfy bed.
If you've your laptop, internet access is 9.99 for 24 hours of a pretty speedy wireless connection through a T-Mobile hotspot (so you could use an existing T-mobile account on your credit card, or charge it to your room). There's 2 PCs in the lobby but web access is something like 6 dollars for 15 mins!!! However, they do offer free access to the websites of all airlines leaving SFO, so that you can check-in online and print your boarding pass. It's also possible (but difficult) to print documents for free from your memory stick (but you need to be a bit wiley, and I think I wasnt supposed to be able to do it....)
Vending machines, and a washing machine & dryer, on each floor; however, the venders were a bit fussy, some were out of order and you'll need dollar bills (they wont accept higher denoms).
Overall, its not a terrible place but management needs to work on cheering up the accommodation. They've tried to be trendy- and some of it works - but I would really sack whomever did the hallways and the rooms! We certainly wouldn't return, as there's plenty of better, less weird, more cheery places in the same price range.
hotel reviews