My wife and I stayed here about four years ago, and recently decided to visit again for an overdue weekend break. Check-in was swift (though they now have a gated entrance which they didn't have before), and the person on reception was very pleasant.

The last time we stayed here, we had a room closer to the golf course, and not such a great view. This time, we had room 213 with a great view of Carmel Valley. Breakfast on our private deck on Saturday morning was well worth the price of admission alone!

If there's a downside, it's the 'resort fee' setup. I don't mind paying such a fee if everything is included, but unfortunately they also add an automatic 22% gratuity for room service. If they put at least a portion of that toward making the rooms slightly more fresh it would be money well spent.

Overall, well worth the stay for the location alone. I wish the resort fee was really all inclusive though.

We stayed at the Carmel Valley Ranch April 5 - 12 room 263 and had a wonderful time. We loved it so much we extended our stay by an extra day. We stayed there with 2 children and found lots of fun things to do within the resort. My children loved the pool by the tennis courts. The pool was very clean and the hot tub was fantastic. The pool house was well equipped with clean towels, soap, shampoo and even sunscreen. The rooms in the Ranch Suite are extremely spacious and more than enough for a family of four. The beds were exceptionally comfortable especially after a day's hike in Point Lobos and Big Sur. The front desk was friendly though they forgot to give us new keys when we extended our stay so much so that we were locked out and had to hike down to the lobby to get new keys. The rooms also don't get cleaned until later in the afternoon and one day we came back to the room , after a hike, at 3:00 and it was still not cleaned. We loved the quietness, cleanliness and the friendliness of the staff and would go back to vacation there again. We also loved the fireplace and made great use of it.

We stayed at Carmel Valley Ranch April 24 through 27 in the luxury Veranda Spa Suite. Overall, I was pleased with the hotel itself, but definitely have some complaints about the customer service at the hotel, and also the dining options for dinner. I expected 4 star treatment from this hotel, especially since we were paying for their luxury suite, which is close to $400 a night. The hotel staff talked a big game about trying to help, but they never actually got anything done. For example, we were told that the Citronelle lounge was a much more casual atmosphere than the $200 (and 3 hour dinner) we had sat through at Citronelle the evening before. Once we got to the lounge, we saw that you could only order appetizers for food. My husband asked the restaurant manager for recommendations on where to go for dinner, and he informed us that he would "get us on the list" at Citronelle for 9:00 and acted as though he was doing us a favor, even though we had previously inquired ourselves and could have gotten on the list at that same time. When we pointed this out, he recommended an Italian place down the road, but when I asked him if it was the kind of place we would need reservations for, he admitted that yes, it was, and that most likely we couldn't get a table there without having made them a day or two in advance. Finally, we decided to order room service to our room, and I asked the concierge at the lobby for a room service menu so that we could get the order process going faster (speed was not their strong suit). She informed me that I would have to get the room service menu from my hotel room and order it from there.

We had a few other disappointments such as this throughout our trip--as I've mentioned, dinner took three hours the first night and the service was incredibly slow; at one point my husband left our table and went outside the restaurant to the lounge to get another drink...and the waitress never even noticed, and we had to return to the concierge three times to get a key card that would work--but if you ignore the questionable service aspect of the hotel, it was a beautiful place to stay. The golf course was also stunning, and I have no complaints about the clubhouse or the pro shop. In fact, I was very impressed with the brand new Nike rental clubs we were given to play with, and want to thank Bentley for the excellent "non-five star" restaurant recommendation he was able to give us (Volcano Grill in Carmel Valley Village...yum! I'd recommend it over Citronelle anyday! Its not cheap, but the food is great and unique, and the staff is beyond impressive.)

The hotel suite and the grounds were spacious and beautiful and exactly what I was hoping for in this trip; however, the customer service aspect of the hotel was certainly lacking. We probably will not be back to CVR because I know I can pay $400 a night (plus the $300 a night dinner/bar tab we picked up daily) at a hotel just as nice and actually be treated as though I am a guest at a luxury hotel.

Overall, there is a huge disconnect between the experience of checking in to what felt like a W in the middle of Carmel Valley and settling in to our Ranch Suite which was ever so funky and stuck in the 70s. The check in clerk admitted that the renovation was the hotels' attempt to get hip. The music playing in the lobby and restaurant was monotonous and annoying.

The mattrress in room 226 is sagging and needs replacing
There was a huge stain on the sofa
There are no adequate reading lights
Wall paper is peeling in the bathroom
One towel rack is coming off the wall in the bathroom
The lighting in the bathroom is inadequate.

Citronelle's (their upscale $$$ restaurant) menu is green challenged. Not one green salad on the menu as an option to a handful of limited starters.
The quality and presentation of the food however, is very good.
Our wine took forever to chill and arrived well past our starters. Same thing occurred on our second bottle of wine with entrees, giving the wine no time to breath. The timing of food and wine needs to be improved. We also had to ask for bread and water. Overall service levels need improvement. The food was great, but timing and attentiveness was way off, especially given the price.

My bill at check out was also incorrect, which means a phone call today to sort this out. We seem to have been overcharged by $100+. Beware, they charge a resort fee of $25/day, which seems excessive, especially for those of us who do not use any golf, tennis or concierge services.

Hotels can call themselves "Luxury Resorts", but at some point, they need to deliver on the promise.