Hotel Quality Inn di Santa Cruz

I hate to leave a bad review, but I had trusted the good reviews from previous guests and was fooled. So here is my experience. Pros - I chose this place because it had 4 TripAdvisor stars. Plenty of free parking Price was great, $100 on a weeknight Manager was pleasant and kind Location was close to restaurants, liquor stores and gas stations The room was spacious and clean, although worn The TV worked The wifi was good The room had a microwave, refrigerator and tiny coffee maker We did get a good nights sleep, even while being on a busy street We were allowed to check in early Cons - I went to the office twice - once to check in and again to ask where the ice machine was. Both times the office was locked and nobody around (granted, we did arrive early to check in) The pool, while very inviting, was closed which was disappointing The building paint was faded and just sad The bed had a very old, soft mattress that bounced when we sat on it Bath towels, while clean, were cheap, rough and way too small. Time to upgrade! The Kleenex compartment in the bathroom was empty The room had a rather strange set up. Part had old stained carpet, the other part had parquet flooring, as if a kitchen may have been there at one time. The closet was hidden behind the bathroom door. We were not warned beforehand that there would be construction noise within the property. We were put in a room directly above a room that was being remodeled. It felt like all the drilling and hammering was happening in our room, it was so loud and the walls were shaking. We couldn't hear the TV. The noise went on until about 6pm and then started up again at 8:30 in the morning, waking us up. This was very unnerving. While the blackout curtains on the main window worked wonderfully, there is another, small frosted window on the other side of the room that had no curtain and let in a lot of light. So even if the construction didn't wake us up, the morning sunlight definitely would. The neighborhood is a bit rough, and we didn't want to leave the room. There are many aggressive homeless people roaming around. The red flag was when the manager warned us to lock our car and our door. If we were staying more than one night, we would have left and gone to another hotel. We like to stay in Choice Hotels properties, but overall we were disappointed with this one. We noticed a Comfort Inn about 1/2 mile away and it looked brand new and very inviting. While I realize the management cannot do much about the town's homeless situation, the property itself could really use a complete facelift. Unfortunately, this Quality Inn did not live up to its name or the standards of the Choice Hotels organization.