Avoid this hotel
I almost stayed here but canceled my trip (and did not receive the $800 refund). After reading about this place on tripadvisor.com, I could not do it. Please go to this website if you are even thinking of staying here. We booked a different hotel and when our airport shuttle driver drove us past the Renoir he said we would have been crazy to stay there.
Here are some of best (and most entertaining) reviews I could find of the hotel from tripadvisor. I don't even mind that I lost $800 to avoid this place:
If you are into urine, vomit, homeless, porn establishments, contact with local law enforcement and the such, this will be your Disneyland. And this is all before you get to the front door! I am a former military police officer and am currently a lineman for a public utilites company and am use to working in the more difficult and dangerous areas of San Diego. I have spent my career going into homes and businesses and dealing with difficult people in dangerous areas but this was a total cartoon!!
The hotel itself is as it is billed. Bulit in 1909, but hasn't changed much since. We had a "heater" in our room which looked alot like the radiator out of a '70s Ford pick up truck. I think the beds and bathroom were there more for decor as they weren't functional at all unless you just begged enough money or sold enough crack cocaine on the street out front to secure a room for the night. The paint and carpeting are obvious originals which adds to a very faint and definate odour to compliment the fact that you are in fact in the 5th ring of hell (refere to Dante's 'Inferno') However this is the only mentionable quality of the "hotel" as this actually masks the unique aroma of fresh puke and ---- arising from the bowels of the streets of San Franpuko. If the owners of The Renior are looking for a marketing ploy and need a catch phrase, might I suggest the following........"The Renior Hotel.....only a gallon of gas and a matchstick away from perfection!!"
Here is another great review:
My boyfriend and I spent a night in this hotel about 2 years ago and we are still laughing about it. We made our reservation through Orbitz, who rated the hotel a 3 star I think. Paul and I live in NYC, so when we saw homeless people in front of our hotel, we thought little of it.
As we were checking in, a homeless women entered the hotel lobby. She hid behind a poll, expecting not to be seen. When the worker at the desk asked her if she needed help she tried to sneak on the elevator. She was escorted from the hotel. Shortly thereafter, a homeless man entered the lobby. He too, tried to sneak on the elevator. When confronted, he insisted on using the lobby bathroom. The worker behind the desk gave in, and allowed the man to use the bathroom. While this was happening, I heard yelling coming from the street. I walked to the door to see what was going on. To this day, I'm still not sure what was happening that night, but for those of you who have seen the Thriller video or the Pat Benetar's "love is a battlefield" video, it was very similar. Homeless people were marching down the street in what almost seemed to be a choreographed routine.
At this point we had seen enough. Weary from travel, and clearly too fatigued to make a clear decision, Paul and I headed away from the homeless people, who were then congregating in the lobby, and into the elevator.
There was a strange man in the elevator who repeatedly asked us to which floor we were headed. When we got out on the same floor, I was nervous. When I saw that the strange man was staying in the room next to me, I was more nervous. When I saw that we had an adjoining room with a broken lock, I panicked. We called downstairs. There was nothing they could do. I noticed blood on our curtains. A homeless man from the street below started yelling something at me. I tried to close the window, but there was no screen. That wouldn't have been a problem is we had AC in the room, but we didn't and it was very hot.
At that point, we had had enough. We got on the phone with Orbitz, they coached us through the night, and by dawn, we were on our way to find a new hotel.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
