Choice Hotels International

My family and I just took two-week family vacation to the western United States (New Mexico, Arizona, California). On June 8, we arrived in Santa Cruz, CA, intending to check into the Comfort Inn Beach/Boardwalk. It was in a very depressed area. People were loitering on the street and the homeless camped out in multiple places. The hotel's parking lot was very small and we could only find one spot available. Before we could even get out of the car, the manager was knocking on our window, asking what we wanted and telling us that we could not park there and that we needed to leave. It was at that moment that my wife and I decided that this was not a safe environment for our two children. When we expressed our concerns to the manager and asked to be released from our reservation with no charge, he was very rude and hateful (especially toward my wife) and refused, saying that it was our problem and that we would just have to deal with it. He ran the charge ($269) on our card before we even left the parking lot. I made reservations at a very nice Choice Hotel (Quality Inn Capitola) from my phone app and went there instead. The manager of Comfort Inn Beach/Boardwalk acted very hostile and acted very unethical toward us, and robbed us of $269 of our trip budget. We have reserved Choice Hotel accommodations for over 20 years, but this was the worst experience we ever had with a Choice Hotel. Someone should shut this dump down and put this man out of business.