Below is a mini trip report on a recent stay at the Renaissance Esmerelda on January 5, 2009 -- and to benefit all you flyertalkers I uploaded a youtube video showing the inside of the rooms and the hotel.

The Renaissance Esmerelda Resort and Spa is located near Palm Springs, CA in the “resort hotel” district of Indian Wells. It is about a 20 minute drive to “downtown” Palm Springs. This is considered a “resort” property so there is no concierge lounge, and a $20 resort fee is added. The $20 resort fee includes a few things such as bottled water, high speed internet access, and resort bicycles. The resort fee also includes “free self parking” — but I don’t really consider that to be a benefit.

It has been reported by flyertalkers that the hotel gives free breakfast buffets to platinum members… well not anymore. The front desk staff said that they stopped giving out free breakfasts to plats in December, and that they were pretty bummed about it too. The breakfast buffet really is quite excellent — omelet bar, juice bar with watermelon/cantaloupe juice, etc — but I’m not sure that it’s worth the $22 price tag now that it isn't comped.

The hotel is quite a large property and is situated on a golf course. The fitness center looks to be recently renovated and has all new machines with some spiffy workout software installed on them. The outside common areas have fireplaces at night that one can lounge around at. Being a resort hotel it’s definitely a place that you could spend all day and never have to leave. The rooms are nicely appointed — flat panel televisions with laptop/video hookups.

Unfortunately our first room wasn’t cleaned all that well, or there was a really “hairy” person in there before us, as the bathroom was full of hair. We asked the front desk staff for a new room, and they put us in to a different room without any fuss. The new room was actually bigger than the first so that was a bonus... although being a plat I'm sort of bummed they didn't put me in the bigger room to begin with

For more detail and to *see* the rooms check out the video review here: http://yelloww.net/blog/2009/01/rena...nd-spa-review/


-Thnarf