Candlewood Suites Carlsbad South

I don't believe I ever stayed anywhere that the staff was this friendly. From the moment of check-in until we checked out, this staff was always speaking, making conversation and making their guests feel at home. Clean rooms and the staff were constantly cleaning everywhere. Which is awesome, because I can't stand a dirty hotel. They have an indoor pool with a handicap access chair lift. The outside patio has 3 gas grills, a flat top grill, and a smoker to cook on if you don't want to go out to eat, and the rooms have a small kitchenette. They have extra cooking accessories, utensils and equipment you can borrow if you don't have it in your room. If I ever get back to Carlsbad for a stay, this will be the place.

The hotel is clean but the decor and furnishings could use an update. The kitchenette was adequately stocked but just bare essentials. My biggest complaint is that the hotel does not offer any breakfast options. The front desk personnel were friendly and told us there was fruit available in a room off of the lobby, but we would have preferred more breakfast options.

We selected this hotel because it offers full kitchens and has an onsite laundry. They are an extended stay hotel, so their expectation is that guests stay multiple nights, which we did on our initial stay. Housekeeping is on a weekly basis. We returned towards the conclusion of our vacation for one night. The facilities at the hotel all proved to be most excellent. We were pleased that the guest laundry was complimentary. The staff was also very helpful and provided us with assistance on wifi and they also pointed us in the right direction for a restaurant for dining in town (Yellowbrix is yummy!). The reason I did not give more stars was because this is a non-smoking hotel but the smell of pot smoke seeped into our room from an adjacent room and was persistent in the late afternoon and early evenings. When I complained, they offered me a variety of air fresheners for our room. I would have preferred if they enforced their rules. Certainly, all the cigarette smokers were outside, even in unseasonably cold weather, so the "no smoking of cigarettes" is enforced, but not the pot smoking. Yuck. We did return to this same hotel for one night after we had visited Big Bend and then we stayed in a room on the first floor and didn't have any problems with pot smoke smell seeping into that room, so that was really very good and would warrant more stars, but the experience the first stay does cast a (stinky) cloud on this review. Also, there was no attempt at any recycling here.