Renaissance Esmerelda Mini-Report with Video
 

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

Thanks for the review. My wife and I stayed here several years ago and had a great 2-night stay. Last year we stayed at the JW in Palm Springs and really enjoyed that, but we've wondered how the Renaissance compares nowadays.

The Renaissance looks like they've been doing quite a bit of renovating lately to keep the hotel "fresh." Though the boat-ride over at the JW is still way cool :)

Bummer aobut breakfast. wE stayed there in November for a swim meet with our two kids and all four of us got free breakfast.

The fireplaces are nice, but crowded, we had trouble finding seating out there and a lot of trouble finding seating anywhere where there wasn't a smoker nearby.

Too bad about the breakfast. I stayed at that hotel about 18 months ago. Really nice. The front desk staff was excellent. The free breakfast was greatly appreciated. I was given a room that was over 800 square feet, after apologizing that the 1000 square foot room developed a plumbing problem and had to be taken out of service.

One interesting thing. One side of the pool was gently sloped with sand. Nice

Highly recommend this property.