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The majority of Sausalito’s hotels are listed on Hotels.com, and it’s easy to compare prices there for your selected dates and see any discounts or special deals that are being offered. We frequently see prices on Hotels.com that are significantly lower than the numbers below from our spot surveys. As a result, we sought them out and Hotels.com is now one of our sponsors.
Prices reported are surveyed online for Sausalito hotel rooms on a weekday and for a weekend day approximately 6 weeks in the future, excepting holidays. Most of these hotels are relatively small and they book up frequently during the summer.
Insiders Tip: Hotels constantly change their rates and offer special deals, so these are guidelines rather than firm prices. If our survey fell on a week when they have a big wedding or big meeting in the hotel these prices will be higher than what you find by exploring other dates.
You can often find better rates by looking at online discount travel sites, although not all Sausalito hotels will show up on their lists. We did a spot check as we compiled this quarter’s list and found one hotel below for $60 less at a discounter, though all the other prices matched.
Insiders Tip: If you call the hotel directly and tell them where you saw a discount that was cheaper than their published rate they will typically give you the lower rate if you book directly with them.
Hotels are listed in order of their ranking on our Best Hotels survey.
Sausalito Hotel Rates — Autumn, 2015
Name Weekday Weekend Area
Inn Above Tide $360 $380* Downtown
Hotel Sausalito $225 $225* Downtown
Gables Inn $225 $245* Downtown
Cavallo Point Lodge $442 $529 Fort Baker
Casa Madrona $279 $429 Downtown
Acqua Hotel $215 $239 Mill Valley
Holiday Inn Express $211 $266 Mill Valley
* Inn Above Tide, Gables Inn and Hotel Sausalito often require a two-night stay on weekends.
Notes:
Many of these hotels include a free light breakfast buffet as part of the room charge. Be sure to ask about this as it may only be tied to certain rooms at some hotels, and it may alter “apples to apples” price comparisons.
Mill Valley, the location of several listed hotels, is just north of Sausalito.
The Holiday Inn Express Mill Valley is the former Larkspur Hotel, and before that its name was… The Holiday Inn Express Mill Valley! Stay tuned for the latest name change!
Only the Inn Above Tide has Bay views from all rooms; at most hotels less expensive rooms generally do not have Bay views.
Holiday and summer prices will be higher than other dates. Special promotional rates are not considered in this chart. There are a lot of deals out there for all but the most popular dates and places, so checking the net for your specific dates is worth the time.
As you can imagine, one of the questions we are asked frequently is “Can you recommend a cheap Sausalito hotel?”
The short answer is, “No, we can’t. But we can tell you about some places nearby that you’ll probably hate.”
A confession: If you offer me the chance to a) pay $129 for a dirty, smelly room I’ll hate or b) pay $219 for a nice clean little room in a nice area, if I can afford it I’ll pay the $219. If I can’t afford it (and it’s not a critical event) I just won’t make the trip. I know that in some circles that attitude will get me labeled as spoiled, but I can at least say that it’s my honest opinion. Some more opinions:
None of the Highway 101 Motels near Sausalito are as bad as a Cape Cod motel room in the winter with no heat and a foot of snow outside and no extra blankets (that was fun!).
Or as bad as a motel near Buttonwillow or Coalinga or Kettleman City (they all run together when you drive Interstate 5) where they apparently used tobacco as incense and half the sink had been broken off and then glued back on again. The front desk clerk looked like someone who might have lost his temper and taken a sledgehammer to a sink in a fit of rage, so I didn’t complain and just paid the bill.
But I digress.
There’s a reason we don’t list the motels on Highway 101 near Sausalito. If you stay in one of the Highway 101 Motels you may get a room with no cockroaches, with no holes in the wall, without cold drafty air, with no blast of freeway noise, without green growths in the toilet, and without some very odd old smells. But if you look at the online feedback around the web you’ll see that there’s a decent chance you will get one or more of those surprises.
Some are definitely better than others and the online ratings will help you stack the odds in your favor. But the reality-TV-experience odds would compel me to stay at one of the places listed above.