This hotel is worth every bit of its 4 star rating and the hotel alone I would rate a 5/5 on Tripadvisor. It has many suites with an absolutely wonderful view of the bay and small airport, especially at night. There are a ton of wonderful photo/facie opportunities from most of the hotel rooms and right across the road from the hotel. However, I dropped one rating point to give the hotel a 4/5 for a few reasons: -- Most of the local restaurants are highly overrated and over-hyped, and on top of that they are massively overcrowded at least 1/2 to 3/4 of the day. -- Most of the local shops are just about the worst mall-like beach tourist-trap shops you'll find anywhere. The first negative alone would be enough to drop 2 points from the Tripadvisor rating, but this hotel luckily has two excellent places to eat and drink right next to it, within 50 feet. One of those is a fish shack called Barbara's Fishtrap, which has vastly better seafood than any other restaurant. The other is Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, which has about a dozen excellent in-house beers available and a fairly full range of restaurant food, including more than just pub food. The exception on the second negative point above is one local shop next to the brewery, which is a nice homey privately-owned shop with interesting small items and clothes. It definitely does not have the typical beach souvenir crap, but items you won't find anywhere else. On the first negative with the local restaurants, you'd expect the in-house restaurant in a 4 star hotel (with room service) to be half-way decent, right? The in-house ”restaurant” is nothing more than a pub with pub food, exactly what the brewery next door is not. It's probably because they can't compete, but still, do something else. We walked in twice, looked around for 5 minutes, and there was nobody there either time, 3pm and 5pm. We just grabbed a menu, looked at it, and it was just random pub food that was likely all microwaved. But the room service for things like wine bottles, glasses, even champagne glasses, was all excellent, living up to any 4 star hotel. Needless to say, this hotel is great for a one-night stay on the weekend or something like that, but there really is very little to do if you stay for more than one night. And, two excellent restaurants gets old fast after two days maximum. Lots of nearby scenery if you're OK with relatively cold beaches like I am, but don't expect more than that and two places to eat.
