Desert Palms Alice Springs — Hotel in Desert Springs

This is more of a motel than a hotel. It comprises individual "lodges" set around a courtyard with a coin operated laundry/dryer room at the centre.

The staff are extremely friendly and helpful.

The "lodges" are detached and relatively attractive from the outside. Inside its very simple/functional decor.. just painted breeze block walls and beds with no headboards.. something akin to Butlins in the UK.

Our room was like a bedsit as everything was all in the same room apart from the bathroom which had a separate door..The room had x1 double bed and x2 singles; A/C; terrace with furniture; shower room with toiletries; storage cupboard with hangers; fridge; microwave oven; sink with washing up liquid; crockery/cutlery; toaster; kettle; pots/pan; camping style induction x2 ring hob which was stowed in the cupboard with the pans and brought out when you wanted to use it. There is no safe in the room for valuables.

The hotel has a pool and there is a reception area where you can buy snacks/beers/milk/juice, but no cafe or restaurant. To improve the guest experience, something to implement would be a filtered cold water machine e.g in reception area for guests to refill their bottles for day trips as the room tap water is seriously gross with a heavy chemical smell/taste and doesn't run cold (only tepid), even from the cold tap. This would also massively reduce the amount of single use branded plastic water bottles people are buying to get past the chemical water problem

The hotel compound is fenced & gated and the electric sliding barrier is shut at night. There is plenty of parking within the compound outside each "lodge".

You can walk into town in 20 mins where there are places to eat and a Woolworths. There are also 2 places to eat in the other hotels/casino just next door... or just order a takeout.. (some places do deliver) and there is a Pizza Hut which will come out to the hotel.

Alice Springs town is not the best to be honest....We were only staying as a "leap pad" to join Uluru tour and occupied our time visiting the Desert Park Reserve, (which was very interesting), then just lounged by the hotel pool as it was 39C on 5th November and dry/hot like walking ino a sauna.

Town was quite run down and didn't feel especially safe. . (not helped by the fact that it came with a warning from reception staff not to cross to the other side of the river, or to stay out after dark because we would be mugged). The staff warning was about the displaced Aboriginals, but the only threatening behaviour we experienced was from white folks.. (a shouting/swearing/violent looking red neck and his drugged up girlfriend).

Would I stay in Alice Springs again... definitely not. Its just a transit stop, not a...

The villa we stayed in is dated, there is water damage in places, the bathroom is run down, the kitchen cabinets are old and don't close properly, and there was a strong smell of sewerage in the villa the first 2 nights. This was promptly fixed when we notified reception the morning after the second night, but I wish it had been picked up by the cleaners before we moved in or the first time they cleaned the villa. Other than some mouse poo in the shower, it was otherwise clean. The place is not suitable for young children. Other than a few patches of shaded grass near the pool, there is nowhere to go for young kids. The verandah is small, there is no space around the villas, and cars drive up and down in front of the villas (not always slowly) so the kids didn't have a lot of space to play. One hot day, we came back late from a show at Earth Sanctuary and it took a very long time for the room to cool down. Most other hotels would let us keep the aircon running while we're not there, but here the key has to be in the slot thingy for the aircon to work. The pool is nice, but don't expect it to be as large as the photo on their website suggests. It's shaded later in the day, and this was appreciated. It was not particularly quiet in the evenings; and the villas are not well sound insulated. One night, people staying in the villas on either side of us spent the evening on their verandahs and were loud/noisy til late (well past midnight). Asking them to be quiet made no difference (reception hours are 6am to 8pm). I guess it's tricky when there isn't any space between the villas (well, a palm tree). Putting the aircon fan speed on max helped, but it was a rainy day, and we would have preferred going to sleep with the pleasant sound of the rain on the corrugated roof of the villa. On our last night, a sheet was missing from one of the beds, just had a cover, disappointing. It seems a lot of people staying there are staying there for work, or from bush, and less so tourists. The beds were comfortable and staff were nice. Don't expect something of the calibre of DoubleTree, Lasseters (both next door) or the local Big4... Desert Palms is just a pricey motel with a nice pool. Unless you get a deal or a special rate, our advice would be to go somewhere else in town - there are better options in the same price range. We're locals with 2...

Checked into room and stayed 30 min. Wanted to lay down for a bit and the second I pulled back the sheets a spider crawled across the bed. I immediately smashed it. Also noticed there was some kind of tree or bush debris in the bed. I knew I couldn’t comfortably stay there so went to check out. I told the girl at the front desk the situation and she said, “This is the outback what do you expect?”And then she said that she would have to charge me for that day since I didn’t want to try another room even though I was there half an hour and I found an insect crawling on the bed. I had already paid for the room because I booked through Travelocity and I figured I’d just handle it when I get home. The hotel refused to refund me at all and said that I had to wait 20 days while they investigated it and wanted to know if I have pictures as if I was lying about the situation. I finally got a refund for the two nights after placing a dispute with my credit card. I’m still upset that they wouldn’t give me the $140 back especially since I found the spider And I did not appreciate a girl telling me that this is the outback and that’s just what’s gonna happen because when I checked into the new hotel, I had no bugs at all in my room. Also, the Wi-Fi is terrible. I had a hard time trying to book another hotel since I hardly had a connection. Checked into the hotel next-door had a wonderful Wi-Fi connection and a nice clean room with no insects plus it had restaurants on site. So if you want to risk having bugs crawling in your ears or on your face at night, go ahead...