Kona Kai Club - San Diego, California

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Tia Petty

This property claims to be a “newly transformed and expanded resort” that touts “modern luxury” when, in reality, it is none of the above. At best, it is a low rack motel quality room with poor/nonexistent amenities pretending to be a luxury resort for which you will pay nearly $500/night and a $39/day resort fee. We were placed in two different rooms during our stay. The first “marina view” room had a view obscured by a thatched roof pool cabana and overlooked the kids’ pool — a far cry from the beautiful, relaxing marina view we were promised when we booked with central reservations. When we called to say that they must have made a mistake, we were told it was the last room they had and the very loud music/screaming/party would end around 10 pm. — disappointing after we had travelled all day. Two days later, the desk manager finally called to follow up and promised to move us to a quieter room where we could actually see the marina. The second room was in a sad state of disrepair: holes in the linens, a tub shower with a thin topping over the old tile that was peeling and exposing active mold, filthy grout on the bathroom floor and thread-bare carpeting (“recently renovated”?). When we followed up with them about this sad, shabby room, the front desk manager pretended to be aghast, but did not come to see — didn’t know or didn’t care? The disillusionment with this place was not limited to the rooms. A disappointing visit to the pools found a jug of water with no glasses, no towels, and no bartender or servers. The single restaurant that was open had adequate food, but extremely poor service— first visit=20 minutes to get a $7 cup of tepid black coffee to go; second visit=75 minutes to get 2 bowls of clam chowder and a glass of wine (at a not busy noon lunch, after being abundantly patient, we had to approach the host to ask for our food and had to return to host stand to pay our check). The one single moment in our whole stay where resort staff showed some alacrity was several hours after we checked out, we realized we left something in the room safe. We called the front desk and were told the room had been cleaned out, but the new guests had not yet arrived. Front desk manager Elie personally ran to the room and found our items still in the safe. While I appreciated her hustle, a friend in the hospitality industry pointed out that items from prior guests in the safe would cause new guests to accurately suspect their room had not been thoroughly cleaned in preparation to be turned over, so the “resort” would have a huge incentive to get those items out of the safe before the next guests arrived. And, finally, I asked on several occasion to speak to the general manager and never once received a call from him while we were on property or after we returned home. All in all, this “resort” is nothing it claims to be — there are plenty of other options in San Diego — do not be deceived by Kona Kai.

Rachel Getsinger

My family and had our room moved several times because “the reservation was cancelled” when it wasn’t. We were placed into a makeshift ADA room with no bathtub. 5 of us packed into a room with 2 queens and a cot that we had to fight to get.

Parking lot is insane and difficult to park in. People were directing each other in order to safely park.

Two simultaneous weddings at the “resort” meant there wasn’t enough staff to help the other people staying there. Waited over 2 hours for towels to because our room didn’t have towels already.

Glad we only stayed a night, but paid way too much for it.

Nick Banes

Great resort for families. We visited for my wife's first Mother's Day and wanted a place that was family friendly and had a spa that was open during COVID. The resort was very clean and the staff was very accommodating when it came to an early check-in and a late check out. We will definitely be coming back to stay here!

KC GEM

Our favorite place! Highly recommend becoming club members. The best!

Luis Cano

Good food, variety of amenities, well located.

Aleksandr Korf

Отлично!

S Q