Desert Gardens Hotel

“An excellent 4.5 star hotel, on spacious grounds with good size swimming pool, bar, bistro and restaurant”

Our first stay at this sprawling resort for four nights and never a moment regretted. I read it had been built in 1984 and certainly on first look around the infrastructure looked dated eg all buildings and hotel rooms built from cinder blocks and painted to blend into the landscape. But our hotel… more

Our first stay at this sprawling resort for four nights and never a moment regretted. I read it had been built in 1984 and certainly on first look around the infrastructure looked dated eg all buildings and hotel rooms built from cinder blocks and painted to blend into the landscape. But our hotel room was solidly built with very little noise coming from adjoining rooms or those above us. There is no peeling paint nor rust on the exteriors. The hotel rooms are only two stories high (that is, ground floor and first floor, with no lifts, so do ask for a room on the ground floor if you can't manage stairs with luggage). Our bathroom was spacious and super clean, with all facilities in top working order. It was an older model with shower over bath but being such a large room, the lack of a separate shower was a minor inconvenience. Daily housekeeping was greatly appreciated and all resort staff super pleasant, helpful and professional. Nothing was too much trouble. The hotel pool was always fully stocked with green and white striped pool towels, an amenity appreciated as I didn't want to use one of our many bathrooms towels poolside. Our room's ground floor balcony was huge, at least 9 square metres, and had a cute rock garden and native tree planted within, an outdoor table and four chairs. Whilst some might criticize that the balcony wasn't swept clean, we noted how hard it must be to keep up with the Red Centre's red dust, especially on a slightly windy day! Reception is manned all the time, even when you're waiting at the entrance to be collected by a tour bus at 5.45am! Reception is a welcoming sight, manned by three receptionists all the time, able to help not just with check in, check out but ensuring guests are booked for tours of their choice. The hotel staff made us feel that they genuinely cared that we enjoyed our stay, either just to relax or to go sightseeing. The only small thing was that we stayed during the three day public holiday Easter long weekend and our usual 30% discount on meals (being an Accor gold member) was not available, not only at this hotel but across the entire Resort (something to keep in mind for next time).

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