Guest User
January 31, 2023
We have stayed at this hotel many times over the years but being from Canada we could not go for the two years that the border was closed. We were happy to go back in mid-June 2022 but we were worried things might have changed since we knew that the hotel was sold during the pandemic. In the past, this was privately owned. The family that owned and operated the place only had this one hotel to work with and they put a lot of time and energy to make it work. Now a company that owns 30 other properties across the region owns the place. Before 2020, this was a quiet establishment great for families with kids and for adults including seniors. Now the clientele has changed. The new owners don’t care who rents the rooms. They don’t care what the guests do while on their property. During our stay here, a group of people rented an entire section of the hotel (the 14 one bedroom suites). This group ruined our stay here. Of course, the owners of the hotel are not responsible for the actions of guests who misbehave. However, the owners should act when they are told multiple times of the problem and they chose not to. It is something that would not have happened under the previous owners. They would not have rented rooms to that type of people in the first place and if they had done so (by mistake), they would have put an end to the chaos that they caused for three days. It’s strange because when you read the policy section on their website, you would think that things haven’t changed but nothing in the policy is enforced. For example, it still says that smoking is not permitted except in a designated outdoor area. However, the whole place smells like smoke now. People smoke all over the balconies and in the picnic table area. It says that the facilities are available only to registered guests. However, the other guests had a lot of guests themselves who used the picnic area and parked their cars in any of the parking spaces that are supposed to be reserved for registered guests. They even built a fire in the picnic area. Is that even legal in Old Orchard Beach? I had never seen that before. The whole time we were here, we could not use the picnic area because that group took over letting no one else use it. It says “one vehicle” per unit but multiple units had multiple cars. We couldn’t park our car because the lot was full. Some other guests brought orange cones to make sure their spot would still be available when they came back. In the past, each unit had an assigned parking space. That way we were sure that when we came back from somewhere, we had a parking spot and we knew where it was. No stress. The numbers are still displayed but no one respects that anymore. In an area where parking spaces are rare like Old Orchard Beach, it is ESSENTIAL that each unit have its own dedicated parking spot otherwise it becomes a big mess and that’s what happens now at this hotel. What are we supposed to do with our car when we arr