Desert Palms Spa Motel

This place is sooo ridiculous. First of all rooms are sooo dirty. The owners are so rude. All the time we stay here, they watch our every step. And start yelling at us. They didn’t let us drink our café far from the pool. And then the kitchen was very dirty. and inside the kitchen there was a big cat. I will never ever gonna come back here.

This is our 3^rd time coming back to this spa, but was very disappointed about the quality of mineral water.
Where’s the mineral water??? The quality of the water is something you can find it in your bath tub.
The only reason I’m giving this a 3 star is due to having a kitchen facility in the room and the air condition was is a good working condition.
I don’t think we will be back after this visit.
Will look for new facility in desert hot spring.

Wish there was negative stars
Our whole family came back with bed bug bites
If it was any closer to our house I would go back
Never going back
It was disgusting
Thought the bug we saw was a ant
Came back home did some research and found out it was a bed bug
Multiple bites
Going to post photos of the bite mark
I would give this place –5 stars

This motel gets 2 stars because that’s exactly what it is. It is a 2 star place to sleep. I understand that many Unilocalers have an attachment to this place for one reason or another, but I do not believe that all the reviews here have given it the accurate and honest reviews. Lets get to the details.
Parking: FREE! No visible security but my car did not get broken into or anything. There are motion activated lights on the outside of the building, but only near the doors.
Outside: Definitely could use a facelift. The front door of the place has been deactivated and there is a sign on the door that tells you to go around on one of the side doors. Makes for an uncomfortable check in experience right off the bat. Driving around the building, there was lots of trash. Mostly old furniture and an exposed dumpster.
Lobby: This is where you can see the stars start to fall off of this place. There is an abandoned gift shop inside that is just plain unsightly with boxes of old merchandise pouring into the lobby. The place is cluttered and quite uncomfortable. You will find a cat litter box and a few turtles inside which is not something you would see at a nicer resort. There is some kind of kitchen off shooting but I am pretty sure it is for the family owner uses only.
Room: A clean room with a good, working AC unit. Shampoo/​Conditioner available upon request only. There are vertical blinds in the room, which I mention because its an unusual decision. Yes they are cheap and they do work, but you can never achieve perfect blind closing for optimal privacy with vertical blinds. Our TV did not have a remote control (which we agreed is fine, since we didn’t come here to watch television). It was an old school TV and could really use an upgrade. Mini fridge in room. No safe that I saw. No iron, no coffee pot. I don’t know if there were hangers, as I only had t-​shirts so no hanging needed.
Bathroom: Very thin, small towels in the room and there were only 3 for the 2 of us. The reason this becomes an issue is because this place is supposed to be a spa and in order to enjoy the hot springs pools, you need to have towels. No one wants to towel off with the same towel for the shower as you did in the pools. There were no towels in view in the pool area. The bathroom was its own interesting experience. The shower did not produce hot water at all, but the sink did. I took a very cold shower in a shower whose knobs were quite a bit shaky. Toilet worked and that’s really all you need. No fancy toilet paper, just plain old one ply (I would bring my own).
Bed: Not exactly worth it for my money but it appeared the linens were clean. 3 pillows for 2 people but these pillows are absolutely terrible. Very thin comforter, a scratchy fleece and rough sheets. That mattress is tough! Its like laying on plywood. This actually might have been one of the worse beds I have ever attempted to sleep on.
Pool Area: This is actually the saving grace for this place. I saw 4 nice hot tubs with shade covers over them. The light was out on one of the tubs. A little bit of debris in the pools but nothing you cant handle. I dipped my toe in 2 of the hot tubs to check the temperature and decided that one was hotter than the other. We ultimately chose the cooler one but I am sure the hotter one would be nice too. The main pool is huge! All the pools could use a resurfacing as they did scratch me up a bit when you touch the floors and walls of the pools but nothing too annoying. There are grills available for use. I didn’t really check them out but they did look well used and a bit rusty. Again, no towels available out there like we expected from a «spa.» The locker room and shower area looked nice enough.
Surrounding Area: The town of Desert Hot Springs, CA is not exactly popping. There are a few old bars, but really no cute little diners or anything that I expect from Small Town, USA. The town seems to close around 9pm. You have a short, 40 Minute drive to Joshua Tree National Park and that is awesome. Palm Springs is about 30 minutes away and it is generally a much better place to be, so consider staying there if you can.
Some Thoughts: I feel like this place used to be really awesome but has fallen off significantly. Yes the owners are nice but that doesn’t make up for less than quality rooms and services. For the price, you deserve better. It has spa in the name but it is not a spa by any stretch of the imagination. Spas have more amenities than just a few hot tubs that are naturally spring fed. Don’t be fooled by the name!
Price: We paid $ 95/​night on one of those discount sites. The discount site gave this place 3 stars which is about 1 star too many. At $ 95/​night, it is like paying $ 2850/​month for one room with no hot water and a hard bed. Would you pay that for rent or your mortgage for one room and a bathroom?! NO WAY!
Suggestions for your stay: Bring your own towels and pillows! Ultimately, find another place to sleep.

Great place for extreme relaxation. I love that they maintain both the pool and spa so well. This place is great when I want to get away from LA and just relieve myself from a stressful work week. Don’t believe all the negative hype on here, this place is managed by a very nice family and they do a great job of making sure you enjoy your stay.

My wife and I think this place is a great value. Our room ran $ 80/​night week days. We stayed 3 nights. You can check it out at
. What makes this place special (this is our 5^th time here in 30 months) is the quite (usually about 3 guest parties on week days), and the hot-​springs heated to 92 degrees pool that is long enough to swim laps. You can stay in it for an hour and not feel chilled. The pool and Jacuzzis are very clean – an improvement over November of 2011. There is a fridge in it. Some units have kitchens. There is also a separate kitchen for guest consisting of a microwave and coffee brewer. The room is clean. Overall things have been improving. You get the feeling that those who work here care. They also don’t care about eating in the room. It is a family ran motel, very respectful. It is closer to downtown Palm Springs than Ranch Mirage. The pool, quite, and price are what keep bringing us back.

This place is disgusting. I’m actually here right now and I would leave to go to another hotel but everywhere else is booked.
First of all there are stains everywhere! On the ceiling, on the lamp shades etc…
Second, there’s no phone, no wifi, the TV antenna is a wire hanger! Also their ice machine is broken… they have nothing here
What weirds me out the most is they gave us wristbands… what is this, a concert? 4 people per room max
The only good thing about this place is they give free licorice at the front desk (that’s why they get the one star)

We stayed here for the second Coachella/​Desert Daze ’12 weekend, and we had a blast. Jenny, at the front-​desk, was very friendly and helpful. The place was completely booked by enthusiastic concert-​goers, and the motel decided to keep the pool and numerous spring-​fed hot-​tubs open late to accommodate the atmosphere. We comfortably slept four for $ 110 per night, which is quite reasonable considering some nearby lodging took advantage of the opportunity to do some price-​gouging on such a busy weekend.

Stayed here with some friends a couple of weeks ago.
The hot tubs are nice, but thats about it. The pool had mold growing in it, and it was all sorts of slimy.
Our room was so sad.
We had a mini fridge that had a missing foot and kept falling over.
Our toilet didn’t flush right when we got there and we got charged $ 100 dollars for it!!!
No hot water in the shower!!!
Our friends room had black mold in it!
Their Ice machine was broken.
They had a bunch of old refrigerators all grouped together in the corner.
They had old couches that smelled like cat pee outside.
The receptionist had a dog that was mean and growled at people.
Not coming back at all.

Quite, clean as well, and so kind. im here right now all good except weather… Is too windy everyone need to try kitchen roon. Anyways all good right here

Upon checking in, my father in law asked to see the rooms beforehand. The woman at the counter refused to do so UNTIL we had paid for the rooms. We should have taken that as a sign but went ahead and paid in order to check in. We got 2 separate rooms, and I’ll detail the problems of each…
Room 1 (Kitchen and 2 beds)
— room had a STRONG PUNGENT odor from prior cooking
— sink didn’t drain, so couldn’t even wash anything after cooking dinner
— shower head was so weak that you could really only use the bathtub to clean yourself
— Lights will turn off automatically if no motion inside, so in the midst of eating dinner, the light would turn off every 5 minutes. Also, my mother in law was taking a shower while everyone else was outside, and the lights automatically turned off even in the bathroom.
— Blinds in the bathroom are missing, so using the toilet is completely visible to the outside public
Room 2 (1 king bed, no kitchen)
— 1 towel had large stains, and another had holes in them
— Found 1 LARGE cockroach in the bathroom
The jacuzzi pools are small but are reasonable. There are different temperatures for each pool, from cold to just a little too hot… there were some small particles and dead bugs, but nothing more than I would expect for an outdoor pool.
Overall, the experience in both rooms and the interactions with the staff were enough to sour the stay. I haven’t been to any other spas in the area, but definitely won’t be coming back here in the future.

I’ve been coming here since I was a little kid. It used to be a popular spa motel that many families used to visit. but nowadays. it just seems like a dirty old motel :(
I remember being able to cook and eat IN the rooms. even meat. but now they strictly forbid it. I guess I don’t mind that much though because I wouldn’t want my whole room, clothes, sheets, etc stinking like MEAT all weekend! I’m honestly NOT sure how I my parents didn’t mind it when we used to cook meat in the rooms when we were younger.
Another change I noticed were the green jacuzzi tubs. They used to be SO clean. but I went back on my own maybe a year or two ago and the walls of the jacuzzi were covered w/​yucky and slippery green algae. I went back couple months ago and they seemed to have cleaned it up a little bit better. but still. slightly green.
A BIG change I noticed were the temperatures! I’m not sure if it was because I was young and I couldn’t handle heat back then… but the Jacuzzis were WEAK compared to before. The coolest jacuzzi was literally luke warm. and the hottest jacuzzi was. just hot at its best. The dry sauna room is basically just a room to dry off. I had to go back out a couple times to see if I turned the heat on properly. What happened? If it is for safety issues. then I understand… but I really hope it’s not because of poor maintenance.
They also got rid of their ice machines… so unless you bring an ice chest/​box and with extra ice in it ahead of time (for non kitchen rooms). you’re going to have to fit your beer, soju, water, food, etc all in the mini fridge.
A positive change that I saw were the upstairs walkways. I used to have nightmares of falling through the bumps and cracks when I walked to my room upstairs! But they’ve redone the walkway to ACTUALLY be level (not all rickety) and the fence seems to be redone in some parts. I still wouldn’t lean on it though.
I saw another positive change outside in the bbq patio area. I guess it’s because people aren’t allowed to cook in the rooms anymore (you can’t even cook your gogi/​meat in the rooms with kitchens!). There are bbq pits, and always some extra charcoal for customers to use. They’ve added a tarp to cover the holes on the wooden poles above your head and coverings on the wall to block the wind (I’m not sure if they always had this and I just don’t remember though…).
I give this place 4 stars because the owner lady is good to us. The last time we went there was a couple trying over and over again to haggle the kitchen room price. so much so that the owner ended up saying «no, we don’t have any more of those rooms.» and giving the kitchen room to US for being patient customers (we waited 30m for those people to give up and leave). And she gave it to us for the non-​kitchen room price :)

More like 3.2 only because it is slightly better than some of the other korean-​owned motels in the area. I don’t know why it’s 0.2…don’t ask.
So…after several years of going to Sahara with the familia, Desert Palms was a drastic improvement. Just the fact that there were no cockroaches was enough for me to see this place as a gazillion times better than anywhere else in the ENTIRE WORLD! okay… maybe not that much, but you catch my drift?
When my friends and I decided to take a road trip for a weekend to relax and do something about my ghostly pale pallor, we thought for a while about a suitable location. And what’s better than going to the middle of nowhere, in the desert, where we’d have nothing to do BUT soak up some cancerous sun rays? Being the stingy scrooges we are, we wanted to make reservations for 2 people and somehow sneak 4 instead so we wouldn’t get charged extra. tee hee. And what palm springs trip isn’t complete without one night of cooking cha-​dol beh gi and dduk bo sam on a portable gas stove? (If you know what I’m talking about, holla! hahah).
Desert Palms came up and we figured we’d probably feel more comfortable there and we wouldn’t feel as bad jipping the owner of money and stinking up the rooms with the smell of meat. PLUS: they sell the canisters of gas for the stove at the counter. I remember one year when we ran out of gas, we had to go searching in American supermarkets for refills and when we took our empty can to show the workers what they looked like (because they had no idea what we were talking about. «What? Canister of butane??») they just gave us blank looks and directed us to those HUGE blue rhino propane gas containers. Riiiiiight… like those would fit. I don’t want to blow myself up.
The day of the trip, I drove me and all my friends and the trip took WAY longer than planned (Don’t ever take the 91 East. holy cow). We got there late at night and since we made reservations, the owner was waiting up for us to arrive because we were the last guests to check-​in. And due to this, we were CAUGHT and we got charged for the extra 2 people. Sadness. It was still around $ 50 per person for 2 nights, but that just means how much more money we could have saved. *tear*
The rooms are decent with 2 beds, a table with chairs, TV, dresser, bathroom, sink, clothes hangers. I think you also could have the option of getting a room with a kitchen, fancy schmancy. My one complaint about the stuff in the room, the trash can is TINY. By the end of our two nights, trash was scattered next to the bin and we weren’t sure what to do with it.
Anyhoo…food was delicious and smelly! The next morning I awoke bright and early to start working on a golden tan. Desert Palms is more popular among the older people for their mineral water hot springs, than for tanning and swimming. So the upper deck has 6 different jacuzzis each of different temperatures from warm, to boil-​you-​alive hot ddeuguh ddeuguh. And on the lower deck is the one pool and a gazebo with the mother of all mineral jacuzzis that I can’t even keep my feet in. There’s also a dry sauna, locker room, spa parlor. Finally an enclosed area beyond the pool with picnic benches and barbecue grills. Not that big of a motel, but good enough for us poor college students. I sprawled out on the chair and started tanning, but when the people started to come out I realized how many older people there were. Lying down half-​naked in my swimsuit, I was stared at scandalously by the more conservative one-​piece and sarong wearing hotel patrons. Slightly awkward, but I figured I’ll never see them again and so I continued to offend their eyes.
What sucks is at night, when the sun is not out to fry our skin cells, there’s hardly anything to do. We drove to the «main» street which was just one mile of «civilization». Rite-​aid! Carl’s Jr. AM PM! Jiffy Lube! Never were we so happy to see these places, but alas, our happiness was short-​lived as we found out that by 9PM almost everything closes. VAT??? Return to the room, to see that the TV only plays Korean news and talk shows (-.-) If I didn’t bring along my laptop, I think we would have probably died from boredom.
By the end of the trip, I was ready to leave. While it was a decent place and an overall fun trip, Desert Palms is one of those places where you go for a weekend, maybe even just one day. Any more and things will slowly drive you insane, but maybe that’s just a characteristic of the entire city itself and not this motel. har har.
Whew! That was long.
RECAP (for those who are lazy):
1. Decently clean and furnished rooms with nothing to watch on TV (bring own entertainment)
2. one pool, jacuzzis, sauna, spa. Small motel.
3. easy to sneak people in (just don’t be stupid like me).
4. Cook inside the rooms (not really, but they don’t really care)
5. old people. use discretion when tanning.
6. no civilization after 9 PM. plan accordingly.
7. Finally, it’s HOT.