Howard Johnson San Francisco Marina District

The breakfast was really poor. I understand it was a continental breakfast but they could at least offer better quality of sugar, bread and more options for milk. The quality of the food was very bad and on top of this in my last night I had my car scratched. It was very disappointed. One of reason I decided to say there and pay more then other hotels in the same level was because of the free parking. The gates stay open all the time and anyone can go inside. I don’t recommend this hotel. Very noisy and not really clean.

So i’ve moved to sf area for a year now, having my friends come to visit and we booked this hotel for 46 $/​night for 4 people, i must say that it’s a very decent price in san francisco, and common what do you expect for paying that price!!! It wasn’t as bad as those reviews on here, i meant the bad things always are spread easier than the good ones! SO here one good one!

Unilocal makes you give at least 1 star but this place gets ZERO Stars. From the moment we got there it smelled like a mechanic shop and burning tires.
We asked the desk guy if the smell would go away before we even got to our room. He said «no but don’t worry you will get used to it» are you kidding me!!! For $ 180+ a night I don’t expect to feel like I’m sleeping in a freaking muffler shop.
The room was small, dingy and had the same putrid smell outside. We connected to the free WiFi and booked a better hotel down in fisherman’s wharf then told the desk guy to refund our money. He did and we left asap. Don’t waste your money here. Spend the extra few dollars and stay near fisherman’s wharf. You will end up spending that much in taxis/​über just to get to anything anyway. It’s so far from EVERYTHING.

Hubby and I stayed here in mid August while touring Nor Cal. It’s your basic hotel, free first come-​first serve parking, free breakfast, free wi-​fi … but what REALLY made an impression on me was the friendliness and helpfulness of the staff. They were really nice, accommodating, made great suggestions about nearby places to eat and how to get from HoJo to wherever. In addition, my husband left his watch in our room. We made the realization when we were already 2 hours away … we called them, they found the watch and happily shipped it to us, in a timely manner and packaged it nicely. Great customer service — Thanks, Guys!

First impression of this place was complete trash. The awning over the front entrance was dented. It looked like a boulder fell on it. They used a rag to prop the door open. And the place just looked gloomy! Not a good impression. The parking is very limited. At least 10 spots total — first come first serve basically. We decided to leave the car parked and walk the city. It’s very walkable and there’s a lot of public transportation.
Check-​in was whatever. Nothing special. Barely any conversation.
The room was dark and musty. The carpet was stained and fringed. We made sure to wear sandals walking around the room, just in case anything gross was lurking. The bed was clean surprisingly, and very comfortable, which was weird compared to the rest of the room. The TV didn’t work, the secondary lock was missing its latch so it didn’t even do what it’s supposed to do. The bathroom was a great attempt at being decent, but it was really dark in there especially with the thick shower curtain. The shower head was only 5 feet up and was missing a piece. It’s extremely hard to shower in a poorly lit room with a shower head that is at your neck.
The breakfast was the bare minimal, but free ! I think there was English muffins, 2 kinds of cereal, wrapped Danishes, and a juice machine. It works !
I can usually deal with crummy hotels, especially if the staff is friendly. But this was horrible. I would’ve rated it one star but since the parking was free, compared to other hotels in the area, I rated it 2 stars.
I won’t be going back to this HOJO.

This is the most We have ever paid for a shitty hotel at $ 170/​night.
There are no elevators so you would have to take your luggages up two flight of stairs.
You can hear the people below you when they turn on their showers and everyone else outside your door. Beds are terrible. The shower is great tho.
Their cable sucks. We were not there for the TV, but We were there during game 6 of the nba finals and they don’t have that on their TV but the receptionist downstairs have it on his TV. How shitty is that? They have 10 parking spots so if you are not back early then you’ll have to park on the street and in the morning you will have to wake up to move your car.
Definitely not recommend.

I took my 3 kids for a trip to San Francisco for Spring Break. I wasn’t expecting the Hilton. It was cheap. But it was Howard Johnson at least, and breakfast was included, so i took a chance. Bad move, Mom.
1. When we arrived, we were given the wrong room key, to a room which wasn’t ready yet. Fine.
2. So they gave us a new key to a stuffy, dingy, stinky dark room that had only 2 thin pillows. I asked for 2 more pillows (since we were a family of 4) and they told me they didn’t have any… «OK. Well, you’ll have to buy some more»… was my response. So they gave me two more thin pillows. Really? So strange…
3. We only had 2 towels, so I asked for 2 more… the maids gave me (no joke– 2 old, thin, hand towels that were ripped and had holes) I immediately called downstairs and complained, so they brought me 4 nice new towels, but guess what? The next day, the maids took them! (We had only used 1, BTW)… So I called and asked for 4 more… and each day I had to hide my towels from the maids so they wouldn’t steal them! lol (The Case of the Mysterious Missing Towels)
4. Now for the worst part… parking. I have a van– a Toyota. I explained this to the front desk — over the phone– BEFORE I left, because the website said the parking was ‘limited.’ However, as limited as they might be, the term ‘Limited’ does not mean ‘virtually inacessible.’ Nor does it mean, «Who gives a sh$*.» In addition, they could not answer specific questions on how many spaces per room. They said we have ‘street parking’ for overflow… Nice way of putting it…
The truth? The hotel has 12 spaces. The spaces are designed to suit small, compact cars. As a result, I had both sides of my black van scraped very badly– twice that week– both sides of my BRAND NEW VAN, by the way. And, of course, it’s not their fault. No, of course not.
5. Not only were the spaces tiny, but there was often no parking at all, and so I was told to by the front desk (@ 11pm, after my kids and I had just returned from the opera) to ‘go park in front’ on the street, where it was clearly marked «No Parking.» In addition, 2 of my 3 kids were asleep! Are these people kidding me? No way, I said. I ordered them to call hotel attendee who had double-​parked so that I could fit into 1 of the 2 spaces, and reluctantly they called her, and she came out… How unprofessional and rude. 20 minutes later, we were able to park and go to sleep.
6. lastly, the breakfast is not much to write about. But the crappy breakfast is the least of your worries…
In summary, since it was too far for my 3 kids to walk to the pier I spend $ 300 on parking that week. Therefore, for people like me, it would be a better value to find a hotel at the Fisherman’s wharf and then you would have ample, free parking; decent food, good service, a clean facility & and everything at your service.
Never again…

Run by a super sweet, professional, and helpful family. Clean, nice rooms, Great location, safe, and surprisingly quiet even though hotel seems busy when I wake up early for work and see everyone leaving. I’m in transition moving to LA, have stayed at a few hotels on lombard and this is where I’m staying, renting room most often in the city. And the only hotel I will rent from in the marina. The good staff makes a difference, I learned that other hotels in the area are not as nice as the people here.

This hotel is worse than a hostel. The rooms smell like sewer, the towels and linens are old and nasty, showers are dirty. If Health department checks the place for breakfast will definitely close that place. I’ve never seen so unfriendly front desk person, and I think she is the wife of the manager, so she should be more helpful when people need help, or at least respond to the Good morning they say to her. You dont do business playing on your phone all day long! Also, wifi is horrible, get ready to use your own internet

Terrible hotel don’t go. For your own good. There is bugs on the bed in pillows. There’s wholes In the wall. Not even a 1 star hotel !!
;(

Check in Howard Johnson on Febuary 25,2015.Due to the price @ $ 56 a night and location. It was well worth it. BUDGET hotel if you want to spent more on activity rather then staying cope in the room all day. It on the main street Lombard that lead to the crookest street and the golden gate.1 mile from fishermans warf. Parking is first comes first serve but remeber to take all the valuable things from it. Also there is a neighbor hood parking. Room was okay not too big but it a bargain and include breakfast.

Worst experience in a hotel ever! They broke into our vehicle and stole EVERYTHING we had. Clothes, laptops, snow gear, etc. and we still had a week of vacationing in Tahoe. Hotel was indifferent, didn’t seem to care much. Cameras in the parking were not working he said. And walked back. There was a camera directly facing our vehicle that would’ve helped but nothing. We met a family that got bitten terribly by bed bugs and told us they had the same reaction from hotel manager.
Old motel turned into a HJ. Ugly neighborhood, terrible management and not safe. Do not stay here.

I would not advise to stay in this hotel. Stay only if you are looking for cheap accomodation. U need to compromise on many things.

Small room but good hotel, free parking and in a great location with good staff. Paid under 100 $ a night.

Had such low expectations going by other Unilocalers. So happy to be surprised with how it looked. Not bad at all for the price. Great location for a short cab ride to pier and other great places to have fun. Front desk was very nice and helpful!

Yeah, OK, my expectations were low because the price was low. So, I have to make concessions.
About the breakfast, the choice is not amazing of course, few industrial breads and cereals, coffee, orange juice and an old waffle machine which a bit old and rusted. The orange juice is not that bad compared things I’ve seen in Europe (update: If you take too much, the machine does not have time to renew it and it tasted bland, fail). Cereals are, surprisingly, fine too. I either sucked at making my waffle (possible) or they tasted bad (possible too).
Front desk does not really give a shit, as expected. They yell at people that don’t get how the waffle machine works (I know that it’s not obvious for everyone, so, lost foreigners should be given some credit there).
I am surprised to see families here but, well, I can’t really tell what I will do with my family if I ever have any but probably not go in an hotel without much check (which I did not do here, or, I expected not to have an amazing experience at least).
The rooms? Well, they are quite old and are directly outside, which is not amazingly secure but… You can survive. Grab a parking spot as soon as possible as they are not reserved and are really limited in number. Once you got yours, you may not want to move.
tl;dr works if you are like backpacking alone or such, but I would really not recommend otherwise.

For the love of God… do not stay at this hotel. I’ve traveled around the world and have stayed in jungle huts and «roughed it» in 3^rd world countries. This was by far the most disgusting, unkept, pathetic hotel/​motel/​room I have ever stayed in. I would say the room is most likely cleaned… 1X a year. Make up smudges on mirrors, holes and hair in towels and sheets. There was also a corner of my room that had yellow tape on it to cover up a hole…
To sum it up in one word… UNSANITARY. If I could give negative stars on this I would. Pay an extra $ 50 and stay is South San Francisco rather than this place. Your soul will thank you. I had to take a few showers to wash away my disgust after sleeping one night here.

Rooms are small and you can hear everyone open and close doors, very disturbing while trying to sleep. continental breakfast is a joke. Staff very friendly.

Bad things have happened in room 108.
Sometimes I make dumb decisions. I can often be lazy. I consider my stay at this Howard Johnson a lesson on speaking up for yourself and not being an idiot. Also to never ever stay at a Howard Johnson again.
It was the end of a long, tiring day. My fiancé and I had checked out of the hostel at Fort Mason because we wanted to treat ourselves to a private bathroom. We didn’t check Unilocal since she had stayed at this location about a year ago, before it became a Howard Johnson. Back when it was just a cheap motel. When we arrived, we just wanted to take care of some online work and get some rest. The wifi was impressively strong. Sadly, that was the end of the good surprises. After getting business taken care of and being disappointed by the TV (around 30″ with an SD cable feed blown up to fill the screen), we went to crawl into bed — that’s when the visit took a turn.
A couple of the remarkably threadbare pillowcases had some lipstick stains. To the floor those went. I don’t need a pillow to sleep. We turned up the heat and tossed the blankets too for good measure. While they were threadbare and riddled with cigarette burns, the sheets looked ok. We were exhausted so we slept.
The light of morning brought the nightmare of our room to life. What appeared to be drips of blood were in the carpet in front of the sink as well as on the counter; stains and fingerprints all over the walls; the smoke detector hanging from its wires from the ceiling; water damage on the floorboard. Did I mention the BLOOD IN THE CARPET? I’m sorry, maybe it was some ketchup or someone got crazy with kool-​ade but given the state of the rest of the room…
«At least I get to end this with a shower» I thought as I pulled the nicely folded bathmat from the edge of the tub to reveal ANOTHER BLOODSTAIN. Sorry, maybe it was someone enjoying a soak in the tub with some french fries & ketchup or maybe that kool-​ade. But probably not. As if that wasn’t enough, the drain had to be held down if you didn’t want the tub to fill up as you showered.
We washed as much of the experience off as we could and left an hour earlier than originally planned. On checkout, we told the guy at the desk how disgusting our room was. He said we should have called the front desk to let them know. He’s right, we should have but we also shouldn’t have to let the front desk know that the room they rented us was out of a horror movie. This wasn’t one problem, this was a lightly cleaned crime scene without police tape. I have zero faith that their other rooms would be any better and based on the other Unilocal reviews, I’m probably right.
Do yourself a favor, sleep on the street if you must but STAY AWAY.

We arrived to our room and found three large black curly hairs in our pillow and sheets were dirty. The receptionist came up and admitted hairs were unacceptable. However, he explained that spots in the sheets are normal because «some things never come out even if you wash them, like salsa». He offered us another room and when we inspected the bed we found another hair. At this point, we told him we wanted refund. He agreed but was surprised because in the second room there was «only one hair».