Holiday Inn Resort South Padre Island - Beach Front — Hotel in South Padre Island

Great location, horrible rooms, okay service. We had booked this room following a great vacation last year at the Holiday Inn beachfront location in Pensacola, FL, which was excellent for the price. We booked an ocean view room.

HVAC in both our room and building was clearly wonky. The hallways were sour with the smell of mold. Luckily, our room didn't smell that bad, but it clearly had humidity control issues with the bathroom floor remaining consistently damp throughout our entire stay. It was impossible to dry used beach towels in the room. Mirroring other guests' experiences, we noticed some slight staining on surfaces suggestive of mold growth. Curtains for the windows did not work well, and consistently got stuck. My wife and I both came back with mild skin irritation, which we suspect is attributable to the mold and humidity issues. The AC in the room was very loud and the fan sounded like it had worn out its ball bearings.

Beds were not great. My wife did not get good sleep and the humidity issue resulted in some damp uncomfortable sheets, as others have reported.

Breakfast was okay, but nothing special, and oddly they did not provide knives to eat pancakes with, only forks. When we asked for knives, they pointed at the bucket of forks. Service at the beachside restaurant was slow. We tried getting desert at the lobby bar only to be told that they didn't have ice cream. The lobby bar did have live music, which was a nice touch.

Pool area was definitely odd, with antiquated structures that look like they got built in the 90s and forgotten. The entire complex looks to be a poor redevelopment of the haunted water park next door. Insufficient lounge beds and chairs for the number of guests and a large outdoor walkway running through the middle of the pool area that takes away from any chill vibe you could reasonably achieve. Uncontrolled children jumping into 3 ft deep water over the heads of adults; an accident waiting to happen. They charge for cabana rentals, but they look so pathetic that you could hardly call them a cabana; I wouldn't pay money for it. Pool area was littered with trash, with seemingly no one in charge of picking it up.

We checked out the arcade. You have to pay to play the games, and roughly a quarter of the games were in non-working condition. It's just something that they advertise to guests and then neglect.

Elevators in our building were missing buttons and terribly slow. Decorative stickers in the elevators were peeling. No separate elevator for service staff, meaning that the already slow elevators got further clogged with service carts. During our stay, we witnessed 3 separate traffic jams due to service carts clogging the hallway, which delayed us in returning to our room.

The location is great. The view out the window was great. The beach access ramp was good, but the wash off facilities for sand need to be expanded beyond a couple of hoses. Beach was great, clear blue water and no sargassum or tar balls when we visited. The hotel does seem to contract with a beach rental service that sets out lounge chairs on the best locations on the beach early in the morning. As early birds, we still got good spots, but I find it in poor taste that so much of the beach ends up dedicated to empty lounge chairs that you have to pay to use.

It's not walking distance to anything, but driving around the island was easy enough. Watch out for drunk drivers though, we saw a few.

For hotel management, it's clear from other reviews that you have been made aware of many of the issues above, particularly HVAC. HVAC is a pretty core thing to nail for any hotel, especially one on the Gulf in the Rio Grande Valley. It is actively dangerous to allow guests to continue to stay in your hotel under these conditions, and let this review stand out to any future lawyers in the event that someone dies of an asthma attack upon entering the building due to mold spore inhalation.

Be wary of the positive reviews. Many are wildly inconsistent...

Editing to add that the manager responded and clearly ignored all of the issues. Not only is the hotel rundown, but they don’t care about their customers. Avoid this hotel y’all.

RUNDOWN!!!

Ignore all of the good reviews! The reviews stating the “resort” is rundown and in desperate need of improvement, those are the accurate ones. I could imagine it being a higher rated hotel YEARS ago, but now, NO! Absolutely far from it. The entire hotel looks almost vacant. The paint on the outside is so worn down, with panels for AC either so rusted that the rust is leaking down the wall or the panel has fallen off. The pools were soooo murky I felt disgusting swimming in them. The one “palm beach” pool had a slow incline, but was so in rough that my toddler son tripped and really scraped his knee. The tiles in the pool are cracked, and places where they’ve been “replaced”, the tiles don’t match! It looks awful. There is a pool in front of the tower closer to the beach. It’s so small! And right beside the bar/restaurant! What a dumb location. You have to walk through the bar/restaurant to get into the pool. That restaurant smelled disgusting too! We ended up taking the food back to our room. The other pool is the swim up bar pool. I refused to even step foot in there YUCK! But they BLASTED music until 12 (YES 12!!!! Even though signs say “quiet after 9” and the reception staff said “our outlets turn off at 11”. So no. For a “family friendly” hotel, why is it a rave at 12??? I asked to move rooms because my toddler son couldn’t sleep from the music and the reception staff was FaceTiming someone the entire time and ended up walking away to FaceTime!!! Another staff took over. He ended up finding us a new room away from the pool, which was great. Thank you.

The restaurant inside the hotel!!! It’s so sad. What a sorry excuse for a restaurant. The food is alright but seriously uninspired and blah food. There was one server for the entire restaurant! He was so nice but made service so slow. No music. No ambience. Only a lobby/restaurant in serious need of a makeover.

The room itself was alright. Clean enough. The other reviews stating the toilet area is small is so right. You can barely close the door. Not a hard pass for this reason, but just seemed ridiculous.

My last complaint here. The fire alarm went off at 4am. We ran down and there was NO ONE outside to direct us where to go or let us know what was happening. Guests all just stood around waiting. The alarm stopped and we went in to check and one lady was at the front desk on the phone and just said “false alarm. Sorry”. No follow up. Absolutely wild to me. And the alarm in the stairs!!! SO LOUD!!!

The only redeeming factor is how close it was to the beach. It suck’s the entrance to the beach was connected to a public entrance so it was BUSY and really no one checking if people in the resort were guests (what was the point of wrist bands).

All in all. For the price we paid, the “resort” was entirely not worth it. It was way too run down for the price. We were extremely...

I would like to first start out by saying this hotels needs to use all that money they get as being a resort and start to maintenance there property so it wouldn’t be so run down. If you’re looking for a vacation Spot DONT make the same mistake we made by booking here . The pictures are NOT updated . The ac in lobby area didn’t work so they had portables out . The room are so poorly taken care of that they have mold and rust on the ac inside and outside . The bathroom have rust and old old old fixtures that look like they want to break . The table in your room has been painted over and chips paint and broken wood . The lamp shade for the room has rust on it don’t even know how that’s possible but it’s what is was when we were in the room. The ac has live wires coming out of it at ten bottom . The frig in both room we booked didn’t work properly .. I think the newest thing was the bottle of Dove soap in room. The pool has a small dead bird that I told one of the employees in black and they didn’t take care of the matter so we took it out of the pool. The chairs around the pool are broken to where u someone lounge in them and broke the who knows how long ago and they still haven’t replaced them. The main pool with the bar has wires hang from the cabana light fixture . Can’t forget the rust on the pool fountain. The outside of EVERY ac when u are outside the building had rust stains coming down on them nothing to even take a picture to brag where I stayed . I needed up posting the condominium next door. To pretend I stayed there . There is no last river … especially no access to the water park next door it’s boarded up. But we’re differently had no interest in it because it property maintained was just as bad . My kids tried out that they claimed to be a arcade room but that’s a complete laugh because they had 1 tv on with cartoons that others off no games just a coloring paper and dried up markers and broken Crayons . Oh and the most frustrating thing was the WiFi they have would turn off and has so many people trying to get a hold of me but couldn’t because the WiFi sucked . This stay was so bad and yes I brought everything up to management and they gave us free breakfast but we paid over 1300 for this to only get told we need to take it up with who we booked with. The worst experience I’ve ever had in hotels and of all it’s a resort. Not to mention When I asked to speak the the GM. white guys with glass he was in a meeting … biggest joke because he was sitting a a table behind where I was waiting to talk to him . He showed no concern but I want to say the floor manger and the other Hispanic girl they did what they could . They handled themselves with concern but it’s the management (GM)that makes this a bad place because he did everything to void coming to talk to us because he was in a “meeting” with himself at a back table .. smh DONT SPEND A FOLLAR AT THIS LOCN YOULL...