We really enjoyed our stay here. It was a little more expensive than other hotels, but well worth it for the convenience to the beach. We stayed in room 14. We loved our location, balcony, and view. It was up a bit so that helped eliminate some of the outside noise. The office staff was very friendly and even remembered my first name. We would definitely come back.

I have stayed here 5 times now. I need a good bed, want to hear the surf at night, and want a clean room and hot water. Pretty simple. Some rooms are adorned nicely others just basic. I come here for the location not a fancy room.
Room 18 has a comfortable bed, great view, and situated to not get much other noise. (except one night I could hear the reservation people running their microwave, which was solved by closing the bathroom door)
Room 19 has a comfortable bed, great view, and is situated to not get much other noise.
I have not stayed in 20, but would expect its like 19.
Room 23 has a bed that left me tossing all night, sore and tired in the morning. The location is next to the restaurant, so you hear the fan over the surf until they shut down around 10pm. There is a bright light outside the room to light the stairs. The attendant was attenentive enough to unscrew it when he figured out it couldn't be turned off. The door on this room is glass and the shade is private but doesn't do a good job of blocking light. A lot of hotel foot traffic goes by this room's windows.
Room 24 next door likely has similar issues.

I booked this hotel on Hotwire and chose a 3.5 star hotel. This place is NOT 3.5 stars. 2 tops! Registration was not very good, and the employee did not do a great job explaining where our room was. We had our bikes with us and it was very awkward transporting them up and down the steps. The room was small---and had a double bed which seems pretty small for two adults. There were cracks in the walls, a chunk of tile was missing from the bathroom sink. NO AIR CONDITIONING so we had to keep our windows open. This was not ideal because from 3pm -9pm there were workers right outside our room replacing a railing and the machines they used were noisy, not to mention filling up our rooms with fumes.We cancelled our second night. I did not want to try for a "better" room since we had our bikes with us and moving things around would have been a pain. Also, we had to sleep with the windows open because of the lack of AC so we didn't get a good nights sleep because of the people outside of our room and the howling of the sea lions. I did a triathlon the next day in Santa Cruz which was a little challenging on two hours of sleep. We cancelled the second night because the amount of money we were charged was ridiculous given the state of the room, and I wanted to chill out after my race and this room would not have been fun. Oh, and the curtains smelled as well. Again, NOT 3.5 stars.

Average rooms, which in my opinion are not worth the money. We were supposed to have a beach view in one of the bungalows, technically we could see the beach but it certainly was not facing the beach and was up a side street. This was quite disappointed.

Overall I did not love Santa Cruz and thought it was quite a tired beach resort with not much to do when compared with the rest of the West Coast. We originally wanted to stay in Monterey but as we were only passing through they have a 2 night min over the weekend so we chose to stay here instead.

The staff were very helpful and Adam, the bar man, was fantastic - one of the best I have come across.

I did think that the hotel was expensive for what it offered but then I would never go back there and would suggest trying another location for a better overall experience.