Riviera Resort & Spa Palm Springs — Hotel in Palm Springs

I liked our stay at this property and generally had a good time, but there were some major inconsistencies/issues that I need to call out:

Check-in: I had booked 2 rooms and put in a request for adjoining rooms. We got to Palm Springs around noon. I went to the resort and asked if they can give us 1 of the rooms. He said he's "locked" adjoining rooms in the system for us and 1 of the rooms is ready and we can check-in. When we went at 4pm to get keys for the other room, it turned out that they had given that room to a different guest. What!? The gentleman who had apparently "locked" adjoining rooms for us was done with his shift, so we couldn't find him. The lady at the reception said there was no note and the room was "open" in the system, so she gave it to another guest. After spending some time, she was able to find us another set of adjoining rooms, but in a different building. We had to repack our stuff and move to a different building. I'm glad they found us adjoining rooms, but this was definitely an inconvenience.

Lighting: The lighting in the 2 rooms was so different! I should have taken a picture, but the light fixtures in the 2 rooms itself were different. One of the rooms was bright and the other one was dull. Both the rooms were of the same type. Even if they weren't, I wouldn't expect such a big inconsistency in lighting, especially for adjoining rooms.

Text Messages: They had all the details of our reservation. We stayed there for 4 nights. Starting from the night on the day of checkin, I got a text message for 4 straight nights which was somewhat along the lines of "Checking out tomorrow? Click here for a special offer to extend your stay." I mean, I can understand if you send it to me on the last night. But what kind of system do you have which sends a message to extend for the days we're already spending at the property?

On-site store charges: They have a store in the resort called Joe Merchant's Coffee & Provisions. I went here to get milk for my toddler. 1st time I went there, they charged me $2. 2nd time, they charged me $1. 3rd time, they charged me $4. This was within the 1st 2 days. I'm 100% sure they didn't have an item called "milk" in their system and what I was charged depended on who was behind the cash register. Baffling!

Costco Credit: I received a $75 credit per room for booking through Costco Travel. We decided to use it at their dine-in restuarant called JWB Grill. After dinner, our server couldn't charge it to the room and said we'll have to pay by credit card. I asked him to wait and that I'll go check with the front desk. There was a woman at the front desk. When I explained her what happened, she immediately understood. She asked for our room numbers and told me to go back and ask them to charge it to our rooms and it should work. Apparently, they had to "open" up the room in the system to enable charging to the room directly. Again, if this is something that is known, why wasn't it done proactively?

Housekeeping: We had to ask them to clean our room and then follow up multiple times before someone would eventually come. This was a pattern everyday. So frustrating! Also, the phones inside the rooms had shortcut buttons for different services like concierge or housekeeping, etc, but all the calls were routed to in room dining. They would then give me a number for concierge or housekeeping, who never picked up! I had to walk over to the front desk or go find someone from housekeeping in the hallway if I had to talk to them. Horrible customer service!

Pool: There are 2 pools at the resort. 2nd one is at the rear end of the property. This pool area never had pool towels. When I asked someone, they said we have to go to the main pool to get towels. Seriously!? How inconvenient for guests.

The check-out process was smooth. The staff always seemed friendly. But I cannot recommend this resort to others. If I come back to Palm Springs again, it's unlikely I will stay here myself. Hope management takes note and tries to fix the problems mentioned...

Black Out|When we arrived August 2nd, the hotel was suffering partial black outs. It is important to note, we were told the whole hotel was not blacked out, but many buildings were. The power was going on and off until about Midnight when it stayed off, largely, for good. During the EXTREMELY hot night it came on sometimes for a few minutes, made loud noises, and then turned off multiple times. In the morning, it was still off when we prepared for our event. We had to go to starbucks to enjoy AC and food before our event. We were notified in the middle of the day that they had a "temporary fix" for it; not very promising.||We spent friday night absolutely not sleeping. It was too hot to sleep. When we did start to fall asleep the power would come on for 2 minutes, create a ton of noise as the AC started then immediately shut off, creating MORE NOISE. Opening the door would invite bugs. The food in our fridge no longer had power. We had to navigate using our phones' lights, but being precious of the fact they had little charge. It was too hot and we were provided NO amenities. They did not deliver water, they did not give us cots in AC filled buildings. They provided us NOTHING. Others told us they refused to compensate the rooms initially, and told us to call our credit cards.||Finally they allowed to ONLY compensate us for our single night that was miserable. Because I did not sleep, and because I did not trust that a "temporary" solution was going to continue to work, I left that night while my travel partner stayed one more. They refused further compensation when I called them Sunday, asking them to cancel Sunday night there. ||Don't worry though, for some reason while the lobby was in pitch black, Jimmy Buffet music was still playing. They prioritize playing his music over giving light or having any amenities. Dystopian.||Wrong Room|We were also given the wrong room. We paid for 2 king beds, but were given a king bed and a couch. They did not provide us any bedding so when we raised that we got the wrong room, we were asked what bedding we wanted for our Couch bed. We asked for 4 pillows. They came giving us only one. We had to again ask for more pillows. They did not set up the bed or help us at all. ||We were allowed to transfer on Saturday, in which we had to pack all of our things again and move, but now the new keys for the room were not working. We were given TWO sets of keys that did not work. Finally a security person came, and tried the SAME THING again. And could still not get it working. We had to leave for dinner, and were told to pick up the keys later. ||Lack of Compensation|Overall, I think we deserved at least two nights compensation. The fact we got no food vouchers, we got no reach outs to make sure we were okay... really we were given nothing, like we didn't exist. I was panicking in the middle of night that i was too hot. I was chugging water to ensure i would not die of heat exhaustion. Without any fans, or AC, no windows I trusted to open, how is someone supposed to exist in that kind of a room. ||When I called to cancel my monday night, the staff on the phone were very dismissive and acted like 1 night was all i was going to get. I told them that was the bare minimum, they agreed. ||Summary:|Don't trust they'll keep your reservation, because they know how to TAKE a reservation, they do not know how to HOLD a reservation, and that's really the important part. Do not trust they will help you if the power goes out during an EXTREME HEAT warning from weather apps. Do not trust this hotel. At every corner they could have done something to help us feel better, and I left early because I could not trust them anymore.||They also left their staff out to dry. The staff tried their best, but on the night of all of us having our worst night, but i was told the supervisor wasn't even there! Instead letting the front desk people get yelled at (not by me, it wasn't their fault) while in a black out room of Jimmy Buffet playing. The front desk staff...

This is the worst hotel I've ever stayed at. We were attracted by Margaritaville's solid reviews online, especially for the spa. But shortly after booking, they announced that the hotel would be rebranding to Riviera Resort. We should have cancelled our bookings, but we were assured repeatedly that services would not be affected. What a load. Instead we arrived to a dirty, rundown, understaffed hotel with years of unaddressed maintenance problems and poor customer service. The hotel has no business being open to the public right now, since they clearly cannot provide a remotely acceptable experience for guests.

A little history: the property started as Riviera Hotel in 1959 and was a cornerstone of the Palm Springs resort scene until it was sold multiple times, went bankrupt, closed in 2020, and reopened as Margaritaville the same year. Now it's being sold again and renamed Riviera. The staff are doing their best in a terrible situation. Several workers told me the same story: they were surprised with the rebrand news one day at work, with no prior warning. Soon the new ownership re-interviewed all staff and laid off a huge number of people. They're left with a skeleton crew of underpaid staff who are probably looking to jump ship before it gets any worse. How Margaritaville hotel has managed to have a 3.9 star review, I do not know. But I'm sad to say we were duped. Here's a comprehensive list of our issues:

My cousin's room had a foul sewer smell that forced her to relocate. We met two other guests with the same complaint. There were no working phones for several days, starting a week before our trip. We could not reach the front desk or spa or even leave a voicemail. We filled out contact forms on the website and never heard back. When we finally got through to the spa voicemail system we still never heard back. So we booked our spa services online and hoped for the best. At this point it was too late to cancel our room bookings anyway.

The shower nozzle fell off both my and my cousins' showers. My sister had water leak on her head from the toilet in the room above. The bathroom ceilings were water-damaged in my room too. The property was in general disrepair with peeling paint water-damaged walls.

Both the hotel’s hot tubs were both broken the entire weekend. They had no heat, and one of them had no jets. They tried and failed to fix them on Sunday. Instead the water became so scalding hot that people could barely get their legs in, and everyone's skin was turning dark red. The temp had to be at least 110. We all joked about how we knew what lobsters must feel like, but in reality it was probably very unsafe.

The spa was in total disrepair. The website advertised a steam room and hot tub, but neither of the 2 tubs were heated and the steam room was out of service indefinitely! Aside from the private massage rooms it's literally just two lukewarm pools in a pretty room. One person said "that's the hottest we can safely heat the jacuzzi." Another person claimed it had been "broken for days." Nobody would take any responsibility. The women's locker rooms were even worse. None of the four showers would get hot. Same thing on the men's side. To top it all off, we found a giant dead roach and a moldy, water-damaged wall near the showers, which the spa tried to hide behind a tall cabinet. Not to mention that two different male employees came into the women's locker rooms without warning to check on something. I couldn't believe it. When I complained about the roach I was told "it's the desert - you're going to get cockroaches." Everyone there was just so miserable and rude. I negotiated a 25% discount with the manager, which is still a joke considering the disappointment and frustration we all felt.

The staff were nice for the most part. Our masseuses and aestheticians were great, and Alyssa at the front desk was very polite. My issue is with the greedy management who have NO business inviting guests to this sad excuse for a resort in its current state...