Hammock Beach Golf Resort & Spa — Hotel in Palm Coast

My family and I have been going here for 10 years now and so many things have changed for the worse. Let’s start with the fact that my family and I paid 4500 for the week for a three bedroom room in the main tower. When we got there, there were multiple surprise issues. For a family of 3 they would only valet one car. Not a total issue but still a negative change we highly enjoyed when we were staying at the hotel. While self parking, my sister crashed into one of the concrete pillars in the garage because an employee on one of the golf carts came speeding past and cut in front of them because they didn’t check for oncoming cars. She swerved to miss and ended up wrecking the entire side of her car. Then during check in they put a $500 hold on my mother’s credit card AFTER the $4500. Used to it was maybe $30? Huge charge for someone’s card that might not have a large credit limit. Then, upon check in, they inform us that we could only have five devices connected to the Internet at a time. Other wise, you had to pay $10 a day for an extra five devices. Reminder here that we booked a three bedroom room that definitely had more than five devices. When we asked about the issue at the front desk, they added an extra five devices only because we had to wait an extra hour for our room to be ready. Appreciative of the fix so that’s where some of the stars come from. The other star is due to the boys at the front that helped load stuff out of the car upon check in. Amazing helpers and very nice. Then, we get to our room and it’s fairly nice, kind of out dated. The tvs were pretty old, the sink faucets were loose, the shower had no water pressure at all to it, and the mattresses were hard as rocks. There were black scuff marks all over the walls and the lampshades were cracking and covered in dust. The phone didn’t even work. Otherwise, the rooms were pretty decent. Our first day down on the beach we get our one chair and one umbrella provided by the hotel through the conference (any extras were $15 a piece for the day). The rest of the family brought their own chairs and umbrellas. They place the chair and umbrella right up on the dunes. They tried to explain it was because of “high tide” but the tide had not come in and they would not let us move the chairs. I understand wanting to protect merchandise but the chairs were so far away from the water that it was ridiculous. My mom went and bought her own chair to sit with her family. When she called the front lobby to explain the situation the man was rude and snobby telling her she can’t have her chair “in the water”. When we tried to explain that she didn’t want to be in the water he wouldn’t listen. I’ve never seen somewhere control where you can and cannot sit on the beach. One of the days we actually drove to a public beach toward St. Augustine because the rocks on the private beach at the hotel were dangerous. My sister cut her foot very bad on one of them and my fiancée cut down his knee. Again, not the hotels fault, can’t control nature, but the location sucked. The beach down the road had no rocks. Another issue we encountered was the fact that at one roll of thunder they shut down ALL of the pools other than the indoor pool. Again, I understand safety but they wouldn’t even let us stay at our chairs. We had to vacate the entire area leaving only three options: 1.) go to the beach. 2.) go to the indoor pool which would be insanely over crowded. 3.) go to your room. This was an every day occurrence around 3-4pm because it’s Florida. There are thunderstorms every evening. Overall, we had a good time once we ignored the inconveniences and focused on family time and being together but we will NOT be coming back to this hotel. After 10 years we have seen the experience here at the hotel decline worse and worse. This is no longer worth the amount they charge for the rooms. It has become a money pit with new rules and policies at every twist and turn. Would have a much better time at somewhere cheaper where there are more TRUE amenities. Such a shame to see this...

This was our second visit to this resort and unfortunately it will be our last. Our first visit was about two years ago and was so wonderful that we could not wait to come back. This visit was terrible from beginning to end. Every experience we had without interaction with their staff was wonderful, but every experience involving an employee was upsetting and disappointing. It is an absolutely beautiful property with beautiful amenities, but unfortunately lacks the management and staff that a resort of this price point requires.

We called several days advance to secure an early check-in and were encouraged to arrive at 12:00 to start using the amenities. We were told that the room would be ready between 12:00 and 2:00pm (regular check-in is at 4:00). We arrived at 1:00 and our room was not yet ready. We used the amenities until 3:45, when we went to check on the status of our room. The employee that we spoke to at the front desk, Melissa, was the rudest person I have ever encountered in a hospitality role. We were not even upset that our room was not yet ready, but she threw so much attitude at us with her condescending replies to our questions. When we asked when our room was estimated to be ready, she snarkily replied and rolled her eyes, shaking her head, and speaking to us in the most inappropriate way. We returned again at 4:45, to find others in the lobby complaining about being promised an early checkin, and Melissa again gave us the worst attitude, rolling her eyes, shaking her head, and slamming the door. We spoke to the manager and were given a resort credit as compensation, but our room was still not ready. Have gave us a 30 minute wait estimate. An hour later, the room was still not ready. In our party, we had a disabled person, 2 elderly people, a pregnant woman, and 2 small children.

When we finally arrived at our room, it was too late to go to dinner. We also discovered that the room we reserved (3 bedroom condo in the main tower with a king & 2 queen beds) was not the room that we received. There was one king and two beds that seemed smaller than full sized beds, and our room was as far away as it could be. Before and after making our reservation, we called the resort to confirm that we had reserved a king and two queens, as we also received the wrong room type on our first visit. We were assured that we would receive a king and two queens. Additionally, there was a working elevator inside of our suite, which our toddler boarded 3 times before we moved furniture around it to create a barricade. We were told that the resort was full and room type on your reservation is not guaranteed.

Check-out was also a bad experience. We were told day of that we could stay until 1:00. When we went down to the pool our cards were deactivated. The resort credit they had promised us from checkin was not on our account and they had no record that they had promised us that.

Other complaints: You are not allowed to bring your own drinks to the pools, even if it is water for a baby or a toddler.

The pool and activity hours listed on signs around the resort and on their website are incorrect. On Sunday night (Mother’s Day), the bar closed at 5:00 and they told us we had to get out of the pool at 6:00, despite everything saying it closed “at dusk” (sunset was 8:05pm).

Everything costs extra, and they won’t take any cash. It all has to be charged to your room.

There are no lifeguards and no one enforcing safety in the pool. Two children were swimming underneath of the water slide in a roped off area and adults were falling on them as they came off the slide. When we alerted staff to this, they said they were “short staffed today.” Yet there were plenty of people to enforce dumping out the toddler water bottles.

Positives: the pools are awesome and there are tons to choose from, the room was clean, the ocean was quiet, the golf course is amazing, and the putt putt is free.

This is a beautiful resort, but unfortunately for them, there are many beautiful resorts in Florida, and most of them have superior...

We stayed at Hammock Beach Resort for 8 days over 4th of July weekend. There's a lot of good here, and it has 5-star potential, but there are enough misses to take it down to 3 stars for me. Pros: *Service was consistently good all around - front desk, housekeeping, restaurants, with 1 exception I'll note in the cons.

*Pool area - very nice and we spent a lot of time here, although on busy weekends/holidays you have to line up before it opens at 9 am to get a chair.

*The "greens" - football field sized green space between the main building and the beach and another smaller green space to the side that were perfect for kids running around and playing games (soccer, whiffle ball, tag, etc) in the evening, when it's in the shade of the building. Simple, but a very nice touch. We enjoyed sitting out and watching while the kids played. *Tennis Center - great staff, well maintained courts.

*The golf courses looked great, but I didn't play.

*Room was clean, and even though we were "only" on the 4th floor, we had a great view.

*The grounds in general are very well maintained and nice

Cons: *Total false advertising on the "1 bedroom suite." 1 bedroom implies the bedroom is a separate room. It is not. It is bigger than a standard hotel room, and there is a partial wall dividing the space, but there is no separation, which meant when it was lights out for the kids, it was lights out for parents as well. We would have gotten a 2 bedroom if we'd known this - significant negative impact on our stay. This alone is a 1 star deduction on this review.

*The rooms have a very "grandma" décor (my wife commented that it reminder her of her grandmother's assisted living apartment)

*The building is in fairly rough shape and needs paint and general updating.

*Kids Club night session - so our kids did 2 day sessions and 1 night session at the kids club. The day sessions were ok, no complaints. However, the night session was a mess. We got there right at drop-off time (6 pm) and they weren't ready for us. We waited 10 minutes for the staff to arrive. Then after my wife and I had dinner, we were walking around and we saw the kids out on the main green, where they had s'mores. And our kids were cooking their marshmallows over the flames with no supervision. The 2 teenagers supposed to be watching them were trying to get another fire lit and not paying any attention to them. The next night, there was a big group of kids in the kids club (not ours) playing on the green, while the teenagers watching them sat about 30 yards away paying no attention to them (this was after dark and it was hard to see - kids could have wandered off easily and they would have had no clue).

*Laundry - the falsely named 1-bedroom suites have no washer/dryer, and there is no laundry on property - you have to go over to the Yacht Harbor Village (7 or 8 minute drive) where they have 2 washers and 2 dryers available. 2 and 3 bedroom suites apparently do have washer/dryer. *They nickel and dime you a bit - some of the activities and such that seem like they would be included for guests, such as the bouncy houses they had on the green for a couple days around the 4th, are not included. In fact, they charged $20 per kid for the bouncy houses, but they don't tell you that (it is noted on the activities sheet, but we didn't see that until after). Not knowing this, we got a wristband for one of our kids to use the bouncy houses even though she wasn't there at the time thinking she might go later, but she never did. *The restaurants are all pretty meh. We at at Atlantic Grille twice - some good, but nothing notable; Delfino's twice - put either in any major city and they wouldn't last 6 months; the pool Cafe, which is fine, and the Sports bar, which is average. The Sushi place was the best meal we had - it's solid, but a very limited menu. The pizza place has excellent Gelato, but the Pizza is...you guessed it, meh....