The Twist PS — Hotel in Palm Springs

GUESTS BEWARE The Twist has kept $1839.38 of mine since October 2022, and getting it back OR even one person to return any of my correspondence about it, remains an absolute nightmare 7 months later. I see other reviews here where people said they were due a credit they never received or a booking was cancelled or changed last minute. I had a good stay with them before with a friendly person on location who is obviously no longer there. Huge loss. It looks to be a gamble on the type of experience you will have now. I cannot believe I have to post a review on both Twist & Elevation Property Management pages here, Google, and Facebook in the hopes of getting anyone there to talk to me and get my money back. My next stop is to the Better Business Bureau, and whoever will listen. This is so upsetting and hangs over me constantly.

I had to cancel more than a week before my stay, due to a death in the family - which adheres to their policy. My numerous contacts to the hotel and to their property management contact at Elevation Property Management remain unanswered. There is no way to reach a live person at the hotel; all calls are forwarded to a voicemail that is many times full and cannot accept messages - SO frustrating! The published number for Elevation Property Management goes to the accountant - but not for the Twist. He could not help me, but reassured me after each of my 3 calls to him that he could only pass along my message to the rightful manager, Joe. I’ve gone to the hotel twice while in town, only to find the front gate always locked and no one to flag down.

Their Cancellation Policy states: “Reservations may be canceled up to 7x days prior to your arrival (168 hours prior to the 3 pm check-in time). There is a $45 or 3% cancellation fee (whichever is greater) for reservations canceled more than 7x days prior to arrival.” I cancelled my reservation 7 days, 22 hours, 41 minutes (190 hours, rounded down), which is within that time frame. The most I should have paid was the $45 cancellation fee.

10/10/22: Booked a room, paid $1,830.38, which included taxes 10/18/22: Cancelled reservation via email to Reservations at the Twist almost 8 days before the reservation 10/25/22: Received text from Twist asking me to complete registration paperwork via email; I immediately texted back reminding them I had cancelled on 10/18 and attached a copy of the email I had sent. Received a reply back that they were sorry to see I had cancelled.

I continued to call both the Twist and Elevation Property Management to no avail.

2/20/23: Reached Rick at Elevation Management who said he was on his way out of town, to email him and he’d pass the message along to the Twist Property Manager. I immediately emailed Rick with all pertinent information. No Response. 2/26/23: Sent another email to Rick to follow up. No Response.

I then called Rick who did not answer, UNTIL I called from a different number. I told him I would have to resort to posting a review if Joe, or whomever was now in charge of the Twist, did not call me back. So here I am, 7 months later. I have copies of all correspondence.

Avoid until if and when they have guest relations under control and they actually follow through with their policies and return guests' funds when they are entitled...

First, I will say that I never leave reviews — I think this is the first one I have ever posted on google but I felt our experience warranted it.

To start, we found The Twist just by googling around and thought the vibe would be a great fit for our budget. This was a Thanksgiving holiday getaway that we booked months in advance and everything seemed fine. From what I can tell, The Twist is a hybrid of what you experience with AirBnB (where you’re supposed to receive a check-in email with access codes, etc day of check-in) and a traditional hotel experience with a cleaning staff, etc.

Anyway, after a stressful day of traveling to Palm Springs from the Midwest we arrive around 7:00pm (which is considered after hours for them) and we realized we never got an email or text with our check-in instructions. That's ok, we thought we'd wander in to find someone and get checked in. That's when we discovered that there isn’t a traditional desk or really any workers around at all. They had a door with a sign that said "knock for service" and some emergency contact phone numbers to call for help. We knocked and knocked and called and called only to get a "user has blocked messages" message. We must have tried calling from multiple phones 20 times and always the same result. At that point we were exhausted and ended up abandoning our original plan and set out to try to find somewhere else to stay at 8:00 the night before Thanksgiving.

Luckily, we found somewhere to crash and the next morning (Thanksgiving day) we emailed, texted and called every Twist contact we could find leaving urgent messages for a human somewhere to respond and help us figure out this situation. To their credit, less than 30 minutes later we received an extremely apologetic text outlining our check-in instructions. We agreed with The Twist in that exchange that we deserved at the very least a full refund of that night's stay to which they agreed to send us a check in the mail for. We got on with our vacation as planned and the rest of the stay was fine and uneventful.

The property is a refurbished apartment complex and while not as nice as the pics made it look, the rooms were satisfactory to us. The pool and hot tub were nice and maintained. Fast forward a month or so and we still haven't received the refund check. We reached out to them a couple days ago and they said there were more issues with it being approved and those have been cleared up and the check will be sent that day. I will update this post if we ever get our money back, but I gotta suggest avoiding this place if you have other options. The room was fine (although, we seemed to be over a bar that played loud music until midnight which you could hear as you were trying to sleep) and decent location with lots of walkable things near by but the mismanagement of basic hotel things and our experience scrambling for somewhere to rest denotes 1 star...especially since they still owe me money. Please pay me the money you owe me The Twist.

UPDATE: The Twist's check did arrive in the...

I saw this place on a website last year and have wanted to stay there ever since. I love the mid-century modern decor and the pictures of the rooms looked enticing. I finally got the opportunity last weekend. I booked one night in the Superior studio. I checked in online (there is no office at the location). I used my code to get into my room and a different code for the pool area. There was a code for bikes, but I have no idea where they were.

The location of my room was AWESOME (room 204). It faced the Old Las Palmas neighborhood with lots of trees and a view of the mountains. My balcony was perfect with a little couch and table for sitting. The floor-to-ceiling windows on the view side of the room truly maximized the view. The room was true to pictures, the decor was lovely mid-century modern. The room had a full kitchen with cooking/eating utensils, a keurig coffee maker with a few coffee pods. There was a teapot on the stove, but no tea was provided. The cream provided was the cheap powder packets. For almost $300 a night with tax and resort fee to stay here a nice touch would be to provide half and half and put it in the fridge along with some bottled water that would be nice too (there was none).

I visited the pool area but didn't stay long. Again, the decor in the pool area was fun mid-century modern with plenty of comfy seating areas for relaxing or reading as well as lounge chairs for sunbathing. But, there was a sewage smell permeating the area. Not sure where it was coming from, but it made it unpleasant to stay in the area. Fortunately, my room was on the opposite side of the hotel (away from the pool area).

There was also a huge TV in my room. Great for watching movies.

The hotel was a little further from downtown than I realized. I had planned on walking everywhere. But parking wasn't too bad in the downtown area. There is also a great little coffee shop right around the corner from the hotel, Ernest coffee.

Overall it was a good experience, just a little expensive for...