My children and I stayed at the Lowes Santa Monica for 4 nights in February. Our rooms were ready, next to each other, and had cookies and milk waiting for us when we checked in. The bellman was great, as was the front desk staff. Housekeeping noticed that I was going through Kleenex pretty fast (had a cold) and thoughtfully left an extra box for me. All the staff were great, room service was reasonably tasty, the location convenient to the pier, the beach, the main drag of Santa Monica. Nice check-in gifts for kids. The bad parts, though, really got to me. The carpet on the 6th floor appeared to have extensive water damage and a terribly moldy smell. We were in non-smoking rooms--but had to walk through smoking to get to the elevator. Ugh. The carpet in my room was stained and ruined, some of the upholstered furniture stained(big huge off color blotches--ewwww!), and the bathroom felt like a Holiday Inn upgrade and I expected something nicer. The in-room coffee pot didn't work. The rooms are a good size and well equipped, but the dinginess got to me after a day. Too, every light bulb in the rooms is florescent, and while I applaud the enviro component, the constant yellow cast reminded me a of bug zapper and began to really get to me because the room felt dark and cheap and gross. I didn't think the rooms would bother me that much because I knew we'd be gone all day. Wrong! Next time, I'd splurge for Shutters.....

We have just returned from a 5 night stay at the Loews Santa Monica Hotel in california. We actually won the holiday so we were very apprehensive about the whole holiday but from the time we arrived we were made to feel very welcome. On checking in we were given an upgrade from partial ocean view to full ocean view, our room was of a very high standard with everything we could have asked for. We couldn't have wished for anything more, the views from our room were amazing overlooking the Pacific Ocean.The hotel is just a short stroll to local shops, bars and restaurants. I would definately recommend this hotel to anyone wishing to have a holiday to remember, we certainly did,.We brought home with us to the UK many happy memories. Once again thankyou to everyone at the Loews for giving us a very special holday to remember!

My family and I stayed here for one night in early January 2008 after an all night flight from New Zealand. I had requested connecting rooms (king connecting to doubles) and we stayed in rooms 818 and 820. Despite the fact that the hotel was about half-full when we arrived in the late morning, the front desk was unable to get us into our rooms right away, so they let us use a different room to store our suitcases and change clothes in order to be able to use the swimming pool and spa area. Despite the overcast skies and cool weather, the pool was terrific. It's quite large and nicely heated. The adjacent hot tub was great, too! The spa has nice locker rooms and is well equipped. Despite my confirmed request for ocean view rooms, the rooms we were given were peakaboo ocean view. I grew up in nearby Pacific Palisades and was hoping to have rooms with views that looked north up the coastline towards Malibu, but we were too jetlagged to haggle once we finally got to our rooms. We had a nice lunch in the hotel's restaurant, but service was pretty slow. If you valet park a car there, they'll charge you $30 which I thought was pretty steep. There are two unusual bronze statues at the hotel, one in the front entrance of a guy holding a surfboard. There's another one at the pool of a young woman in a lounge chair. I later learned they are the son and daughter of the hotel's owner, which I thought was really quite strange. This hotel has great access to Santa Monica and the beach, but it was quite stormy when we stayed there, and just wanted to recuperate from our overseas flight before heading home. I only had two complaints about this property: the closet door in one of the rooms was cracked and hopelessly off track. And after I checked out, I checked my Visa account online to verify the hotel's charges and it seems they were adding a separate (and incorrect) extra charge that I had to dispute with their accounting department. That left a sour taste in my mouth. But overall, this is an upscale hotel in a nice location and I'd stay there again.

The Loew`s Hotel in Santa Monica is a lovely hotel on a wonderful beach. The staff was very efficient and friendly and everything was spotless. I just have to say that for the price paid, our room was ordinary, something like you`d expect at the motel across the street. We were very disappointed in the room itself. It was so small that the coffee machine and ice bucket had to be stacked on top of the television cabinet.

It just seems to me that when you pay more than $500 a night for a room, the mattress and pillows should be softer, the view a bit more spectacular (we had an ocean view, but from just above the street, you couldn`t see much) and the bathroom lots larger.

Maybe because we asked for an extra day on our stay, they thought we were desperate. But since the hotel seemed nearly empty, did they actually think that we were this desperate? No next time for the Loew`s.