Ayers Rock Resort — Hotel in Yulara

If one could avoid this resort, I would advise it at all costs; however, you may have no other option as this resort has locked up the market in Uluru-Kata Tjuta. This was the most overpriced and worst hotel experience of my life. And I'm no stranger to travel. If you do stay there, book the cheapest room you can find. This isn’t a luxury resort by any stretch.

Since all guests generally arrive at the same time (limited daily inbound flights), you’ll wait in line at the front desk for check-in. The person at reception greeted my cooly and showed zero warmth throughout the process. I tried to ask a question, and she abruptly cut me off, saying, “let me finish what I’m doing first.” I wanted to say something be held my tongue. Not a good start.

I had booked a room with a view of the rock and paid extra, fully expecting extra. After checking in, four of us schlepped our luggage around 250 yards to our room which was part of a separate building of 6-8 units on two floors. We picked the short straw and got a unit on 2F, forcing us to lug heavy baggage up the stairs.

The double room we booked was extremely dated and unacceptable ($735.00 per night for 2 queen beds). I have attached photos. There was water staining all the way up the toilet bowl, a rusty bathtub, and a stained shower curtain that looked like it had never been washed. It was generally a decrepit room. Sitting on the balcony the last morning, sipping coffee, and looking across 12 miles of desert at the rock was my only positive memory of this hotel.

I went back to reception the first evening and booked a separate room for my daughter and her partner for around $240.00 per night, roughly one third the price of our room with the purported view. By some fortune of bad luck, I was served by the same receptionist. She wore the same dour expression and displayed body language signaling that she’d prefer to be anywhere but where she was. I asked if she could take a bit off the double room and she refused. The new room was generally in better condition than ours, but still had a large, moldy water stain on the ceiling.

When they sent me a survey, they asked what it would take for me to award them a 9-10 rating. This is how I responded:

"Another 100 years of improving your service. More professional staff. Clean, maintained rooms. An elevator in buildings or free porter service. You expect guests to roll their own luggage 200-300 yards over an uneven sidewalk and then hoist it up a flight of stairs? For $735 USD per night? Get real. I was stunned to see a moldy shower curtain, rusted tub, and severely stained toilet. One can mitigate mineral deposits, but it costs (e.g., water softener, etc.). The most professional and courteous person on your staff (front desk) was an American, not Australian. That’s pretty sad. You have a captive tourist market and I’m quite certain none of this feedback will change anything."

And it didn't. This is the response they sent back:

"Dear Guest,

Thank you for taking the time to complete our guest satisfaction survey.

We are sorry to read that your stay at Desert Gardens Hotel did not meet your expectations. The satisfaction of our guests and our ability to provide an exceptional Red Centre experience are very important to us, and it is disappointing that we fell short on this occasion.

We hope you were still able to enjoy exploring the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, and we thank you for choosing to visit Ayers Rock Resort.

Kind regards Dxxxxx”

ChatGPT couldn’t have responded any better...

We stayed at Sails in the Desert in a Superior Room for one week. Overall excellent friendly service from staff, room was clean and tidy (though the air freshener was a little over-powering - we had to air out the room for a few minutes) with an ensuite, great shower, and big balcony with recliners and umbrella.

Most tours will have you leave early in the morning (6am generally) and return to the resort by around midday or shortly after, leaving you the afternoon to yourselves to rest and recover ahead of any evening tours or events you might have that night. You are generally back between 8-10pm so you still have plenty of time to do your own thing afterwards and get plenty of sleep for the next day.

The only real complaint we had with the room is that they have locked down the 2011-model Phillips TV's in the room to prevent use of the external HDMI ports which is a bit silly and the first hotel I have ever encountered to do this. These days it is common for people to bring along their own Chromecasts or the like to do their own media.

Unfortunately the hotel was not able (or not willing?) to enable the HDMI ports, and their own in-house analogue TV service was already malfunctioning with only channel 10 and the resort information channels working for us (staff confirmed there were known issues). We switched over to our tablets in bed in the end, and when trying again later in the week, we found that the TV was unable to tune into anything at all, not even the resort info channel.

Given the obvious investment in the rest of the property with good paint, good decor and VERY well maintained gardens and pool area, they really need to consider replacing the TV's with newer panels such as Sony's BZ commercial panels (which still allow locking down), allow use of the HDMI ports, and dump their analogue TV broadcast system in favour of the multitude of free IPTV channels from all networks in Australia and then add the resort info channel on top of that (because the internet access and overall wifi infrastructure was actually really good (40mbps symmetrical!) with lots of bandwidth and wifi available everywhere, even in the town centre - they just need to utilise it better).

But the TV is mostly a first-world issue. Everything else was A-1. Preparation, tourist info, organisation for tours, bistro, cafe, presentation, knowledge of staff, cleaning staff, local facilities - I just cannot fault any of that. This is genuinely one of the best places I have stayed at.

There is always the issue of cost that gets raised with NT holidays. Yes, consumables in NT are expensive, such as garlic at $40 per kilo at IGA, but other things like flavoured milk and ice cream was exactly the same price as Sydney. Burgers from the cafe and other eateries were $30-32 with chips, but I tell you what, they were BLOODY GOOD. You MUST try the camel burgers here and the meat lovers pizza with camel meatballs and kangaroo salami at the Outback Hotel on the other side of the resort. They are quite satisfying. The Bistro buffet breakfast at $50 a head was good, but not great - you get a better quality buffet breakfast (but with less food choices) at the Kings Creek Station (but that is also 300km away from...

Sounds of Silence tour should not have recommended long sleeves and pants, and definitely not in 37 degree heat. My mother had heat stroke soon after sitting down, causing us to waste the $585. Tyler, the porter who helped her back to her room was fantastic, but the dinner should have been cancelled with that heat. Our bins in the hotel room were not emptied for until the 5th day. Likewise, housekeeping popped in clean towels but did not restock the toiletries and coffees, so we had to get ours from the housekeeping trolley. Our family astro tour was not booked, even though we had booked it in on the website months ago, and the tour remained on our booking. It took 3 days for Stevie to investigate this and confirm that we were not booked in. My daughter was deeply disappointed to have missed it. The tour desk in the town square was unmanned for the entire 6 days that we were at the resort. Apart from Stevie, her colleagues were ill equipped to confirm the bookings and reservations. Front seat staff could not confirm whether the BBQ at the Outback Pioneer was still running. I was literally told to "just go there and see what they had". In the same line, the information on your website does not match the information on the app regarding what is open and serving what. The Pira Bar is listed on your app as having an extensive menu and open to 8:30pm. This is definitely not the case. Imagine our disappointment when we went there at 5:30 and discovered that he was closing up. The airport shuttle would not come to the Lost Camel for our departure. We had to transport all our bags to Sails in the Desert. There was no offer to get a porter to move all the bags in a buggy or van. If my mother has been travelling on her own, this is certainly not something she could have managed. We could not receive an itemised statement for our hotel and tours at checkout, instead only receiving a statement of our food and beverage. This is despite requesting a full itemised invoice. Either the Reception staff are grossly inept, or the booking system is grossly inadequate. This is particularly concerning as we will now have to trawl through the credit card statements and raise problems with the bank, rather than at Reception itself. Specifically, I have 2 confirmation emails for the Sounds of Silence and Field of Lights tours and I wanted to ensure that we were not charged double. Also my SEIT tour was cancelled due to the guide being unwell and I could not check if the tour fee was refunded. What the Mangata restaurant considers a Poke bowl is completely ludicrous. The rest of the food was delightful and tasty, but that Poke Bowl is completely laughable.

The Uluru sunrise and Kata Tjuta tour run by AAT Kings was spectacular. Similarly the Field of Light tour was very enjoyable. The Ilkari buffet dinner was delicious and the service was excellent Stevie was friendly and knowledgeable but her 2 other colleagues were definitely wanting in efficiency and friendliness. It is amazing to walk around Uluru and Kata Tjuta. I highly recommend the hop on...