Safari Motor Inn

Good value and clean, basic room, nothing fancy. Quiet. Good for a
budget-​type motel. The owner Ravi and his wife were very nice and
very accommodating, a definite plus. It’s obvious they take care of the
place.

The price and location is great but oh wow do you get what you pay for. The owners, Ravi and his wife, upon greeting you, treat you like you’ve wronged them from the get go. I booked a room online, months in advance. When we checked in, Ravi told me how cheap a price I had paid and how it wasn’t good for his business. I booked the room off the hotel website and just paid whatever price THEY set for the room so Im not sure how it was me that had done him wrong. Then he told me that since I had booked a room w a queen bed but he only had a room w two queen beds, which apparently is a «nicer» room, that I could only use one of the beds in the room… WHAT??? I booked a room. Thats it. I paid the price they set on their website. I didn’t reserve «a bed». This place isn’t a hostel. When you book a room, you get the room… not just ONE bed bc they’re pissed they only had a two bedroom left to put you in. Without telling me, they then went and charged my credit card extra so that they could get paid the price of the room THEY put me in instead of the price I had booked online. I didn’t realize this until after I had check out and checked my bank account. When I called them about it they started to say things like «if you cant afford it then I guess we’ll pay it back» and then tried to guilt me by saying how they work 16 hour days, etc. For me, it wasn’t the money but the principle. I had booked a room on their website. I would have been fine with whatever room they put me in. But apparently since the only room that was left when I checked in was a «nicer» room… somehow I was the one at fault and needed to pay. I did not at all appreciate how they secretly tried to get more money out of me but charging my card and sadly this was not the end to their rudeness. I will not only never stay here again, i will warn fellow Joshua tree goers to stay away. I have never in my life met such confrontational, pissed off business owners. Im sure its tough running a family owned hotel but whatever wronged them in the past, it wasnt me

We have been here 4 nights and couldn’t ask for anything better. Spotlessly clean, room is comfortable and plumbing works great. Very friendly and helpful couple run it. Great location — easy walk to variety of good restaurants and saloon and the Joshua Tree Visitors Center. Ask for a room away from the main road. The road noise didn’t bother us. Quiet fellow guests. Nice little cactus garden out back. Fridge, coffee maker and microwave in room. Very affordable. Would definitely stay here again.

Best value motel to explore the desert area and VERY close to Joshua Tree National Park west entrance! I decided to enjoy a warm room rather than be too cold camping in the park with freezing overnight low temps! Best decision! I was very comfortable, warm, appreciated the hot shower, refrigerator, & microwave, coffee, free wi-​fi (no cell service or internet within the park so this was a huge benefit for me)! Decent & clean… way better than I expected for that price!

My fiancé and I stayed here because we came a little too late to reserve a camping spot in the Park. We were very grateful that we snatched the last Vacancy at the Safari Motor Inn. The owner Ravi is really nice and has been doing this for 10+ years. I hope we didn’t offend him because we sat in the parking lot reading Unilocal reviews for some time before deciding to go in and see for ourselves. I’m glad we did!
Clean sheets, towels, a mini fridge, a table to eat at, lights, a closet, a blow drier, soap and shampoo =
All the amenities we wouldn’t have had camping. Also the location is super convenient, you can walk to the Joshua Tree Saloon to hear live music and then stumble back in record time !

Very clean, safe, all the basics one needs, and cheap ($ 50/​night). It was a freezing night in Joshua Tree, and this quaint, local inn had exactly what I needed after a 5-​hour drive. Which was warmth, shelter, a hot shower, coffee and wi-​fi, in a very clean and safe environment.
Ram (the owner?) was very kind, courteous and helpful. They give you a map of the town, coupons for 10−20% discounts off local eateries. The inn has its own charm, with a quaint central courtyard containing desert plants and little artistic statues scattered around.

When my bf and I found out that all reservable camp sites in Joshua Tree were taken for Thanksgiving weekend, we decided to get a motel room instead of counting on a walk-​up site. Considering that night temps that weekend got down to the low 30s, I am SO grateful we couldn’t camp (that was a crazy idea anyway). I did some searches for motels near the park and this place came up as the closest to the West Entrance. It had decent reviews and the price was reasonable ($ 50ish during a holiday weekend) so we booked a room. It was a fairly large room, with a king bed, decent-​sized flat panel TV, a small fridge, love seat and coffee table. The décor was typically small motel-​dreary but I’d seen worse (like, at the only other motel in JTree I’ve ever stayed at). It was pretty dang cold when we first got in but once we cranked up the wall heater unit, it got nice and toasty. It was quite loud, though, and I think we turned it off sometime in the middle of the night. The bathroom shower was a little weird to get in and out of but at least everything was in good working order. We stayed two nights and we thought it was a decent experience and wouldn’t mind staying here again should the need arise.
STEPH JUDGEMENT: Serviceable, convenient, and reasonably priced.

This inn was well maintained and our room was clean. The price was right and the staff was great.
However I would suggest that they try to get different systems for heating and cooling. We had to run out and buy a room heater so that we could sleep in the room. The window unit there was so loud that we couldn’t sleep the night before.
It has great access though to Joshua Tree.

I was in town for a friend’s birthday party and art opening. Since the gallery was just a block away, I invited my friend over to swim after he finished his installation. There were three of us sitting around the pool eating pretzels and drinking iced tea, just chilling out before the event started at 7. The owners had a huge tantrum and made my friend leave because he wasn’t a registered guest. There was no one else in the pool, which was very much in need of some skimming.
This place is ugly, my room smelled, the towels were ragged, the carpet was foul, and the AC went off whenever I left the room. The pool area has a few sad dirty chairs, and is surrounded by high concrete walls on all sides so you can’t see any desert or sunset. The walls are very thin, and I could hear people snoring on both sides of me.
Definitely only stay here if nothing else is available.

Convenient and cheap ($ 50) road side motel with no frills. It’s clean, has a mini fridge, coffee maker and wall hair dryer. Shower is low pressure but hot. Wall AC units are not super effective to be honest. Walking into a 100 degree room at 8pm meant it never really cooled down by sunrise when it started heating up again.

Great friendly service. This is a simple, basic modest roadeside motel for about $ 50/​night, a cheap motel, but with spacious rooms, a fridge, microwave, couch, drawers, a closet, and a shower that works. It’s very close to Park Blvd., where you drive up to Joshua Tree National Park, and is walking distance to a lot of the places to eat and shop. It has a basic wall AC unit that works great. The bed was clean and comfortable. The two window blinds don’t keep out the sun during the day like dark thick drapes would, so if you keep vampire hours like I do, this may be an issue for you, but I still managed to sleep like a baby after getting in around 5 am. It also has a pool! I like the personal touch, and found the people here to be very kind. The owner recognized me even though I stayed here over 2 – 3 years ago. Anyway, definitely recommended.

First, the positives: comfortable bed, nice manager, close to Joshua Tree National Park and within walking distance of good food. Now, the negatives: noisy heating unit, lots of exterior lighting that the window blinds couldn’t keep out, shower and sink drains that were sluggish, and minor repairs that should be attended to such as a bare lightbulb in the bathroom or no hook for clothing in the bathroom. It was evident there had once been a clothing hook and a fixture over the lightbulb, and I expect even an inexpensive motel to take care of that kind of small item. But the big deal was that I couldn’t sleep well with all the light coming in and the noise of the heater.
I should have stayed in 29 Palms where better accommodations were available. It would have been further from the park, but worth it.

While staying at the Safari Motor Inn, I was awoken by my girlfriend stretching across me, saying «What time is it,» and trying to check the alarm clock on the bedside table. But the clock wasn’t plugged in, but we eventually found my phone and saw that it was only 3:40am. She had been confused by what time it was because of the bright, bluish lights outside both of the room’s windows.
This kind of sums up our stay at the Safari Motor Inn. Though we were happy to get a room for $ 50 on a Friday night in Joshua Tree, it wasn’t the most comfortable stay — in fact, it was a disorienting one.
The night of our stay we purposely drank ourselves to sleep after a long day in the desert. Because of this, we hadn’t realized how uncomfortable the bed was, how the sheets didn’t really fit on the bed, and how bright the light pouring into the room from outside was.
Once we realized these things at 3:40am, it was hard to get back to sleep. Especially once a nearby rooster started calling at 4am. But we eventually fell back asleep and when we woke, we felt ready for our long hike at Joshua Tree National Park. So it’s hard to complain too much.
The pros are that it’s a short walk to the best places to eat or drink near the area (and it’s cheap). I thought the customer service was friendly, as well. So if you’re used to staying in basic road-​side motels, you’ll be fine as you get what you expect.

We stayed four days in winter and found the motel clean, comfortable and quiet. The building is old but decently maintained. Most important, the room heats up really quickly once the heater is turned on. There is no routine maid service except when a room has to be cleaned up for a new tenant, but we asked to have our room cleaned every day and it was done. The amenities are basic: small tv, dvd player, wifi, hair dryer, microwave, refrigerator, & coffee maker with coffee (but no tea). The owner is friendly and considerate. I didn’t see any of the security cameras that other reviewers complain about. We would stay here again.

Comfortable, inexpensive little mom and pop motel just a block from the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. Very clean (the linens are crisp and deliciously fresh!), everything works fine, lovely little garden and pool out back, very nice hosts. What’s that you say, the owners wouldn’t let you invite all your friends over for a 2 am pool party and got mad when you trashed the room? Grow up. I loved the quiet and privacy and attentiveness of the owners. Highly recommend. If you want room service, go down the road to Yucca Flats and pay three times as much. Me, I’ll stay at Safari every visit to J-​tree :)

Great service requires a great recommendation. Comparing the Safari Motor Inn, a mom and pop motel to Motel 6 would just be sad. When you stay at mom and pop inns you are looking for great service, great interaction and a peaceful night’s stay.
The inn is very modest, so be prepared. The service is great! I left my clothes in there and the motel owner contacted me trying to see if I wanted them back. Since my clothes are never that expensive, I took up his offer of having them donated at the local thrift store! It doesn’t get better than that.
This was my third stay at the same location, and I will go back for the great service from Ravi and his family!

Um, never again. We got into Joshua Tree late at night so my boyfriend had made a reservation here knowing we were just going to sleep & get up early the next day to go into the park. Worse night of sleep ever. I have stayed at my fair share of budget motels, but I told my boyfriend: «I’ve stayed at Motel 6’s in the middle of Texas nicer than this place!»
I understand that this is a budget motel, but the offering of a fridge & microwave doesn’t make up for the fact that our bathroom walls were covered in long dark hair, the bed was a piece of shit & we only had two pillows — there were no extra blankets or pillows in the closet. I «slept» [for lack of a better word] with a hood on my head so I didn’t have to touch the pillow.
Last spring we stayed at another budget motel down the street & I did not get skeeved out the way I did in this place. The towels had weird brown stains on them & the bathroom sink had an old bottle of Bath & Body Works handsoap refilled with some that most definitely wasn’t B&BW. The most redeeming thing this hotel had, besides being right next to the western park entrance, was the cool art deco tiling inside the shower. I didn’t even bother to shower there because 1. I knew we were going hiking all that day anyway & 2. Just because the tile was pretty doesn’t mean it wasn’t hoarding seem serious HPV or staph infections viruses. :shudders:
We love Joshua Tree & will definitely go back again & again, but we sure as hell won’t give them our money ever again. But I don’t really think they were much concerned with repeat customers & good reviews. They know what they are — a crusty place for people to spend a few hours inside.

If you’ve been to any sort of prison camp or Gulag, you’ll probably do a lot of reminiscing while staying at the Safari Motor Inn.
To start, the surveillance here is tighter than a dolphin’s anus (which, as you can imagine, are pretty tight). After about 20 minutes, I got the sense that all forty+ of the motel’s cameras are actually directed at the guests themselves and not meant for their protection (unless of course you’re into that «I Love Big Brother» kind of protection). This fact was confirmed upon check-​out when the proprietor informed my friend and I that he had been «watching us the whole time» and that his suspicions about us harboring other «mysterious extra guests» during the night would be «proven by the tapes». He then showed us a bank of TVs from which he keeps tabs on his tiny little world. It was some serious Lost shit. Push the button my paranoid friend, or don’t…see what happens.
The room itself was mostly clean. The plethora of stains in some places were easily explained by a positive mental attitude and a very healthy imagination. «No, that’s not where someone shit the bed, that’s, uh where they spilled the batter from the brownies they were making… in the microwave.» The shower had some cottage-​cheese-​like substance actively oozing out of the cracks… and that’s cool, man, that’s cool… just not if you want to take a shower.
When you make a reservation online and when you check in, you understand that these folks are super-​proud of their «Giant Swimming Pool». When you actually get ready to go for a swim and approach the «Giant Swimming Pool» you understand what «false advertising» is. I mean it was Art Week or whatever, but I was not informed by any of the literature that the Safari Motor Inn was hosting the world’s largest bowl of putrefying Campbell’s Chicken and Stars. Did someone toss some Gremlins and ass-​mulch in there? Was that the septic over-​flow? I’m pretty sure… I’m not positive… that was supposed to be the pool. Either way, you’re not gonna want swim in it without some vaccine updates. After that, you’re still going to want to shower… at another motel.
There are a handful of standard positives that other folks here have mentioned: Doors. Windows. Beds. Not to sound too bourgeois or luxury-​driven, but these are actually standard in all but the most rudimentary of home-​hewn lean-to’s. I paid for a motel — not a home-​hewn lean-​to. Given the other negatives — Gulag surveillance, bed-​diarrhea, shower-​cheese, and Campbell’s Cup O’Swimmin’ Pool — you’re much better off finding a quiet desert patch nearby and sleeping under the stars… not under the ever watchful eye of some paranoid innkeeper and his equally paranoid wife.
Quick Summary: Do not stay here. Do not let friends stay here. Do not let friends of friends stay here. Rent a tent. Sleep in your car. Do anything but stay here.

When you’re on the road and on a fixed, tight budget and are looking for an indoor place to bed-​down, luxury bells and whistles mean little– especially if they add cost to the final per-​night bill. Essentially speaking this is what you need: a clean, comfortable room with working A/​C, a clean, comfortable bed, a clean, working bathroom with a shower that has plenty of hot and cold water. Anything above that is a luxury.
The Safari is not a luxury-​driven motel. It is not an establishment for spoiled, prissy-​princesses, nor partying hipsters. Instead, it’s an inexpensive, no-​frills place to relax after spending the day in Joshua Tree National Forest hiking and/​or climbing, or participating in any number of outdoor activities available in the Mojave Desert. It is a place to cool off, relax, and clean up and get ready physically and mentally for the next day’s events, which is all that one really needs.
That is not to say that this is all that there is. Each room does come with a television (w/​cable), and a refrigerator. A word of caution: to save money in this desert environment, the refrigerators/​freezers are typically turned to the lowest settings possible– so be sure to adjust as needed. All the rooms are smoke-​free, so if you need to light one up, it’s advisable to use the courtyard, or you might find that the final bill has an extra, fat charge slapped on top of the room rate.
Because this is the Mojave, the temperatures are more often than not in the triple-​digits. This is where the other luxury of The Safari comes in– the pool. The water isn’t heated and is solely dependent upon solar and environmental temperature adjustment. That being said, it’s clean, treated and when it’s a hundred and twenty degrees, feels great– especially when doing nothing but floating and watching the sky.
So there you have it. The Safari Motor Inn– quiet, clean, inexpensive, and comfortable. All that a seasoned adventurer of the road could ask for. Highly recommended.

The Safari Inn is exactly as described by Abe S. We wanted a convenient place to stay while visiting Joshua Tree and this motel fit the bill. The owners were nice and offered us a nice large room at the end of the building for more privacy. It has two doors, the second leading to the patio and swimming pool. Do not expect an exotic garden in the desert, think more India-​like.
Clean, large, everything in working order. Just a typical 1950s motel with drive to door parking. Very cheap for what you get.
Be sure to ask the owners for coupons to Sam’s Pizza.