Just back from nearly 3 weeks in the USA. During that time we stayed at seven different hotels and this one was easily the poorest. As others have mentioned, this is not a hotel, it is a rundown motel poorly situated at the intersection of two major roads and adjacent to a filling station. The nearest other habitation is a shopping mall across the road. It is not in Carmel as we would understand it, it is at least a mile outside the town. So if you are thinking of going to a nice Carmel restaurant and having a few drinks, forget it. Upon arrival, the area outside reception was populated by heavily tattooed smokers. Not a good start. I asked for a quiet room and we were accommodated in this respect however, the room itself was incredibly tired and overlooked the car park. The patio door out onto the balcony from the room looked less than secure. Being quite tall, it was obvious to me, but fortunately not to my wife, that the air vent in the bathroom looked straight into the bathroom of the next door room! We had booked for three nights and on the first night we took our lives in our own hands to cross the dual carriage way to the shopping mall on the other side to eat at a restaurant there. Nothing special. On the subsequent two nights we drove into Carmel to eat and of course this meant I could only have one drink before returning to the hotel. On each night we went into the hotel bar which is accessed through the restaurant. The restaurant never had more than four people in it and the bar never more than five or six. In short, no atmosphere whatsoever. In fact on one night when we approached the restaurant to go into the bar the lady on the desk asked us if we wanted a table in the restaurant and when we said no she said "well what do you want then?" The whole place was so down at heel I was convinced every night that our Ford Mustang which we had hired for our once-in-a-lifetime road trip would be stolen. Fortunately it wasn't. Finally when we checked in, we experienced one of the reception staff, who may well have been the Jose mentioned in other reviews, berating a German woman for not having a credit card and basically telling her that she couldn't stay at the hotel. Lucky her! Read less