La Serena Villas — Hotel in Palm Springs

I have never written a review before and I feel that’s important to note, but an avid reader of them and felt that I needed to be helpful to Those like me reading these reviews deciding whether to book this for their getaway.

My husband and I are here for a four night baby moon getaway from Colorado. The location has been superb and sunshine by the pool has not been disappointing at all! However we have a lot of other disappointments for the price of staying here…

The rooms are cute/well styled and the little private courtyards are a wonderful touch but sadly our tub outside was very dirty/not enticing to use which I was VERY eager to use. Staff also could not provide me with any bubble bath even though I’ve seen in past reviews they have done this before. The tub nozzle was also broken/spraying everywhere, so a let down :(

They supply shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. I am not a product snob at all.. but whatever bath wash they use had clearly been watered down and was mostly water :( again for the price.. expected much more. The water does not get very hot in the shower either..

Moving onto service. We booked this place truly for the sole excitement of sun by the pool followed by some room service here and there as in 32 weeks pregnant and what could be better? So we planned one am for breakfast, put our order in the night before to be delivered at 8:30 am… I was veryyy excited and very hungry (see pregnant status).. no food arrived. I called at 9 to check on things, the restaurant said “oh yeah we see your order” with zero explanation as to why it did not arrive on time, just that they’d bring it “soon”… it arrived 40 minutes later. There was a $10 fee for this “service” aka a 30 second walk from restaurant to our villa.. again no apology or explanation. Then the food… we paid an insane amount of money for avocado crostini that was honest to goodness four bites of cold avocado toast. Again, I was so disappointed and let down by my (what I thought were small expectations on a baby moon, paying $5-900 per night!)…

They advertise complimentary breakfast baskets… which consist of three apples/orange/muffin/yogurt and granola… we used this as snacks through out the day since this was not filling for a pregnant gal :(

Lastly… I booked a prenatal massage, another “amenity” I was SO excited for and with a price point of $165 /hour i expected it to be delightful. While the massage therapist was a very very kind woman… it was not a $165 worthy massage :( I was hopeful for a pregnancy pillow so I could lay face down (pregnant ladies this is the only way to do a prenatal massage) and I felt at that price point there would SURELY be one but sadly no.. and any essential oil use was an extra $15.. insanity. Luckily the sweet massage therapist put a tiny bit of lavender on my eye pillow anyways.. again not complaining about her at all, just the audacity to charge $165 with minimal effort put into making that worthy for 60 minutes by the resort.

The staff was very friendly but very disorganized and felt I needed to verify any request a dozen times in order for the message to be received and followed through ( room service issue and re scheduling of my massage to a different time were left with very little communication).

Overall I just felt disappointed after seeing just how much $ we spent on these four nights for an extremely mediocre/disappointing at a lot of times experience.

I wanted to be as detailed as possible though so as to truthfully describe my expectations vs reality, in case you have different expectations then this may be the perfect place for you. But as a couple who has never spent over $250 a night on a hotel… we were quite sad that this high price point left us feeling this way.

Anyways I really hope this...

This was our second time staying at the villas and the first time we stayed was April 2022 and it could not have been a more wonderful experience. But this time we came, a little over a year later in August 2023, and some changes were noted…

We actually decided to stay in the larger Villa 19 this time, which is one of the more expensive villas, and we're not sure why the hotel skimped on details that we got in the smaller villa 16 when, we stayed a year earlier... for example, there was no welcoming little tequila bottle with shots waiting for us in our room, like we got when we stayed in Villa 16. And then later we noticed housekeeping taking that detail to other rooms. So why didn't we get the welcome tequila shots? We checked in early so the front desk offered to store our luggage until our room was ready. And once our room was ready, my husband went to check it out and it was a good thing he looked because he noticed that the front desk brought somebody else's luggage into our room!

Obviously, it's a mistake, but it's kind of a serious mistake when you think about people traveling with travelers checks, jewelry, electronics and such. Those people never knew their luggage was mistakenly put in our room b/c my husband brought their luggage back to the lobby and told Ivan of the mistake

There are 2 bathtubs in these villas so bubble bath should be a no-brainer. However, when housekeeping brought a little bottle of bubble bath, it was not Lollia brand anymore. Which is not a big deal. If the hotel wants to use their own brand of bubble bath, that's completely fine. The problem was it was shampoo in a bottle! it did not get bubbly and then there were thick particles floating which is what happens when you dump regular shampoo into your bath. My husband took the bottle to the front and told Ivan at the front desk that this was not bubble bath and he looked at us and said “well that's what we always give people”....that's unfortunate. Ivan, of course, then referred to the little boutique shop in the lobby and told us we could purchase Lollia bubble bath if we wanted to. Thanks but no thanks. I actually have Lollia bubble bath at my home and didn't need to buy any for our three night stay. Especially considering this was a small detail they used to offer complementary.

One would think after they mixed up our luggage w/ someone else's that this was a small concession they could have given us, but I guess it was asking too much.

To surprise me for my birthday, which was why we were staying here, my husband booked what he thought was going to be a surprise massage at the spa. Now while I understand that they need an email to send confirmations to, my husband did ask that it be a surprise. That would've been the moment where the front desk should have asked my husband for his email address so that they didn't accidentally send the massage confirmation to me. Obviously I ended up knowing about the surprise when I got the email, but strangely the email was not even sent to the right name. I was confused because they sent it to someone else. But with my email address. Small details, but just stuff that really sticks out. And speaking of small details, they no longer offer slippers in the rooms. It just kind a feels like we got the short end of the stick when we saw other rooms getting their welcoming tequila shots and ladies coming to the pool w/ their hotel branded canvas bags, that they usually leave in your room, but obviously just another detail that was left out of ours.

But you can't go wrong with the on-site restaurant! Azucar and their staff are top-notch.

After hearing of our less than ideal experience, the GM did offer me a gift card. And I...

We spent the last four days at this sweet little property based on reviews in Vogue and other luxury press.

It’s a sadness for such a cute place, perfectly located and a magical history, but this place is in an operational tailspin.

From the moment we walked in the disappointments piled on in little ways, enough of them to say that, sadly, we will not return.

After a stream of text messages confirming our arrival, when we appeared, ours was missing. We had booked their most expensive room and while they were kind to put us into a small room the first night, we had to move and the room we paid for was not available. Every time we walked through the lobby, we overheard yet another guest in a tussle. Apparently, it was a computer system migration issue, but the booking oops was just the tip of the iceberg.

The buildings are architecturally gorgeous, the landscaping is pristine, the interiors are modern and soothing but for this price, so many details that abound in luxury properties were absent. There were no amenities in the alluring claw foot bathtubs - no bath salt, hair or skin products other than hotel-branded mystery bottles of “shampoo, conditioner and body wash.” Weeds topped the edges of the sweet outdoor tubs on private patios. Tiles behind the very expensive brass shower hardware were broken and gaping. We were flummoxed by the choice of an entire wall of empty cabinetry, yet no seating area, so we had no choice but to sit on the bed. Hoping for a warm dip in the Jacuzzi we found it to be cold. The breakfast basket, which is such a romantic touch, consisted of cheap muffins, pedestrian yogurt, and apples. The restaurant, advertised as a Michelin-blessed eatery was empty. Though the rooms featured sleek gooseneck kettles with pour-over coffee pouches, java was a difficult get. The restaurant staff groused at us when we came in at 7:30 a.m. looking for a cup o’Joe.

We only had one meal; a small breakfast of avocado toast and this too was unfortunate - four small rounds of very stale bread and seemingly grocery store guacamole (though admittingly, topped in epicurean dried tomato threads). We asked for hot sauce. The waitress asked if we preferred Tabasco or Tapatio to which we requested the second. The first came.

The bright spots of our stay included a comfy bed, serene property, Spanish architectural prettiness all around and mirthful Christmas wreaths on all of the room gates.

Most memorably, was a wonderful young man (Edgar, I believe?) who really went out of his way to help. He exuberantly changed tires on bikes, offered assistance for everything possible - he was just a delight. Unfortunately, however, fabulous employees like this cannot uphold an entire system alone.

I have a background in hospitality PR, working with some of the most incredible hotels in the world. I’ve seen what it takes to put together an excellent operation and unfortunately, that is the one thing that is missing here. This property needs a functional backbone and then the willing staff can fall into lock step with some congruence. Call an operational genius like Jerry Inzerillo; he is brilliant at this type of thing.

We felt sorry for the owners because we just don’t see how they’re going create repeat business. Reading the reviews here I can see that we were not the only ones. Parent company Kirkwood - come on, share your operational expertise with this magical property; it is so very deserving!

Kudos to the publicist who did an unbelievable job and got us there to begin with. The website was absolutely gorgeous. The architecture and interiors are also very pretty. But no property can survive without living up to how...