Ventura itself is nice. My mom lives there. The problem you're going to find is that great swaths of California still suffer from the "prices are inflated, service sucks, and things aren't maintained, because there's a ton of people who are willing to pay a lot for a little to vacation there" phenomenon.

So I wouldn't expect much from the hotel. I probably would use the SNAs, yes, though I still wouldn't expect much. But you'd have a perfectly nice trip, maybe hike up Grant Park for sunset, take a stroll along main street, do the channel islands one day. Nothing wrong with that.