After spending a few days over New Year’s at The Westin San Diego Gaslamp Quarter, we moved around the corner to stay at the Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter.
While it would’ve been more convenient staying in the same place, we stayed at The Westin using Marriott free night certificates which that stay used up. The Hotel Indigo could’ve been booked with some of our IHG free night certificates, but it was actually better value booking with points (the ‘Cost’ section at the end of the review explains why).
The Hotel Indigo is a very pet-friendly hotel, is nice and comfortable, provides good IHG elite status benefits and is the perfect place to stay if you’re in San Diego to go to a Padres game as the stadium is only a block away from Petco Park.
Here’s a review of our stay at the Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter.
Check-In
The day before we arrived I received an email from IHG (the chain Hotel Indigo is part of) letting me know that we’d received a room upgrade. This was surprising because IHG properties in the US are normally awful about giving upgrades, let alone giving you one ahead of time when you hadn’t even requested one!
We’d booked a King Deluxe room and were upgraded to a King Skyline View room.
On the day we arrived, Shae went inside to get us checked in while I unloaded what we needed from our car. Gloria was the front desk agent who checked us in and Shae said that she was incredibly friendly and helpful.
Bedroom
We were assigned room 920; they did this so that we’d be on the same floor as the rooftop pet area seeing as we had our dog Truffles with us.
When entering the room the bedroom was straight ahead and the bathroom was to the right.
In the entranceway there was a table with a Keurig coffee maker on top.
The bedroom had a comfortable king bed with tables on each side. The cylindrical pillow on the bed worked well as a light-blocker by placing it on the floor in front of the door.
In the corner of the room was an armchair and ottoman, along with a side table designed to look like a tree trunk (or perhaps it was part of an actual tree trunk).
As mentioned earlier, the Hotel Indigo upgraded us to a room with a skyline view and it was a pretty good view.
On the other side of the room was a desk and chair.
To the right of that was a dresser with a TV on top. It was surprising and a little disappointing that the room didn’t have a mini fridge.
The room did have a closet in the corner which contained a safe, iron, ironing board and luggage rack.
Bathroom
The bathroom was a fairly good size and had a long vanity.
The bathroom didn’t have a bathtub, but there was a large walk-in shower.
Unlike some hotels that have transitioned to having large bottles of wall-mounted toiletries in the shower, the Hotel Indigo had small bottles of toiletries.
Dining
The Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter doesn’t offer complimentary breakfast (no Hotel Indigos do), so we grabbed breakfast from the Starbucks around the corner each morning.
The hotel does have some food and beverage options though. There’s a restaurant and bar on the first floor called Table 509 Bar & Kitchen. Breakfast is served from 6:30am-11am, while dinner and cocktails are served on Friday and Saturday night from 5pm-10pm.
Also on the first floor is a pantry area where you can buy snacks and drinks.
The hotel has a rooftop bar on the 9th floor called Level 9. This is open from 5pm-10pm Sunday to Thursday and 5pm-1am on Friday and Saturday.
Level 9 has lots of outdoor seating along with some firepits.
Due to its proximity to Petco Park, some of the seating overlooks the baseball stadium.
Amenities
The Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter has a fitness room with several pieces of equipment and weights.
That equipment includes a Peloton bike.
There are ice machines and drinks vending machines on even-numbered floors.
The lobby has a business center with a couple of computers and a printer that guests can use.
Pet Policy
The Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter is a pet-friendly hotel and they don’t charge a pet fee.
Even better, the Level 9 Rooftop Bar area has a pet relief area which is particularly useful if you’re staying on the 9th floor with a dog like we were as it meant we could walk straight outside without having to take the elevator down in order for Truffles to relieve herself.
There was a sign in the elevator for the Level 9 rooftop bar, so Shae decided to try recreating the martini dog with Truffles.
If the Astroturf area on the 9th floor isn’t sufficient space for your dog to do their stuff, Petco Park has a park outside it called Park at the Park. This area is open during the day, but barriers are put up at night outside of baseball season.
Service
Service at the hotel was pretty good, although we had limited interactions with the front desk staff and declined housekeeping during our stay. As mentioned earlier in the review though, Gloria at the front desk was lovely when Shae was checking in and the car valet team members were always friendly.
The hotel was also much better at providing benefits for those with IHG Rewards elite status than other IHG properties. They proactively upgraded our room before checking in and offered a generous late check out time (more about that in a moment).
Wi-Fi
One downside with the Hotel Indigo Gaslamp Quarter was that their internet wasn’t great. The connection itself was fine, but the speed was poor – so much so that I had to tether to my phone’s internet for a Zoom call.
Check-In & Check-Out Times
The check-in time at the hotel is 3pm, while check-out is at 11am.
On our final day in the Gaslamp Quarter we wanted to take advantage of our 1 hour kayaking vouchers we had left over from our stay at The Westin. Because I have Spire Elite status (IHG’s highest status level), I asked if we could get a late checkout so that we wouldn’t have to rush.
IHG properties aren’t normally very generous when it comes to late checkouts – we’re usually lucky to get an extension of one or two hours on the rare times we’ve tried, if we get a late checkout at all. This time though they offered a 3pm checkout – four hours after the time we were due to check out – without us even asking for it to be that late. That was fantastic, especially because it meant that we then didn’t have to kill time between checking out of this hotel and checking in at our next hotel which was only 30 minutes away in Carlsbad.
Location
The Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter is in a great location in the Gaslamp Quarter. It’s not quite as central to downtown San Diego as The Westin that we also stayed at there, but it’s only a block away from Petco Park which is fantastic if you’re visiting for a Padres game.
It’s only a mile from Seaport Village and 1.5 miles from the USS Midway Museum. There are many restaurants and bars within walking distance, so it’s a great location to be in.
Parking
The hotel only offers valet parking which costs $50 per night. We could’ve used ParkWhiz to get cheaper pricing, but it was more convenient parking at the hotel, plus it provided unlimited in-out privileges. It was also more secure than parking in a public parking lot which was important to use because we were leaving some of our stuff in the car rather than having to bring it all up to our room (we travel full-time with everything we own, so carting everything up is a hassle).
Cost
We booked our four night stay using IHG Rewards points. IHG uses dynamic pricing for award stays which means the required number of points can change from night to night. During our stay it cost 23,000 points per night which means the stay should’ve cost us 92,000 points.
Our net cost was much less than that though. I have the IHG Premier credit card which offers every 4th night free on award stays. That reduced the cost to 69,000 points. I also have the old IHG Select credit card which offers a 10% rebate on award stays. That reduced our net cost further to 62,100 points, so an average of 15,525 points per night.
We bought IHG Rewards points for 0.5cpp (cents per point) last year for stays like this. That means we effectively paid $77.63 per night by buying those points which is a very low price for such a good hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter. The hotel was charging $152.14 per night when we made our initial reservation, so we effectively paid half price by buying those points.
Final Thoughts
Although I liked our stay at The Westin a little more, we still had a great stay at the Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter and would certainly be happy to stay there again.
It’s in an excellent location, they’re very good at providing benefits to those with IHG status, their staff members are friendly and it’s an extremely pet-friendly hotel.
There are a few things they could improve like having a better internet speed and providing mini fridges in bedrooms, but overall it was a very nice stay.
Truffles Approval Rating
Truffles awards the Hotel Indigo four paws out of four – pawfect! She came very close to adding on the golden tailwag to her four paws rating, but she likes to reserve that for places that are truly amazing.
The Hotel Indigo came close though, what with the lack of a pet fee and a pet-friendly rooftop relief area.
Our Rating
Room = 4.2 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.6 / 5
Food = 3.8 / 5 (We didn’t eat there, so the score is based on the price of our drinks at the rooftop bar and how much it would’ve cost to order food there)
Location = 4.8 / 5
Service = 4.5 / 5
Overall Value = 4.7 / 5
Total = 4.43 / 5
Address
Hotel Indigo, 509 Ninth Ave, San Diego, CA 92101
dee says
Went to a dinner on the Midway..It was soooo Kool…
stephen says
That sounds like fun!