OK, so there are places that are great and places that are ok and places that aren't very nice. This is the first hotel I've stayed at that falls into the "avoid at all cost" category. It's not that it's dirty or uncomfortable or anything like that. The rooms are reasonably clean, there's a nice pool that's well kept up, a common room where you can brew a cup of coffee in the Keurig, etc. Read on for the fatal flaws.
My wife and I came out to Palm Springs to join four other couples. We all wanted a reasonably priced hotel we all could stay at that was within walking distance of restaurants, bars, etc. One of the group saw the exemplary ratings the Rendezvous had earned (in the past) and suggested we make it our base for out trip. Indeed, there are tons of great reviews for the Rendezvous and it had won awards from Trip Advisor and such. It appears, though, that the place recently changed ownership and plummeted in quality in disastrous fashion. (And they haven't bothered to change their Business Info on Yelp. Do NOT expect any kind of breakfast, happy hour, or spa service as they do not provide these.) As a matter of fact, forget any review done prior to mid-2021. This place went from 5 to 1 star right around then. A list of the problems:
1) Lack of security. I won't go into this in detail, but anyone staying at the hotel could have gotten into anyone else's room anytime, day or night. Really. Had the hotel not been pretty much completely occupied by our group of five couples, we'd have left before our first night there.
2) Lack of anyone onsite to check people in, deal with problems, ask you how your stay is, etc. They appear to have tried to set up an automated system in which you download a photo of your driver's license and a selfie to deal with the requirement that they ID everyone staying at the hotel. Once that happens, you're supposed to get an access code to get into the hotel. Of course, we didn't. Fortunately, one of our group got that code from another guest. Really. The next day, I received a cheery text asking me how my stay was going. When I replied with a request for another room key, I received no reply. Until the next day when i got another cheery text asking me how my stay was going. (I didn't bother replying to that one.) At no point during our four day stay did we see anyone connected with the hotel except the person who came and cleaned the pool.
3) Smaller problems included concrete floors with no rugs. No creamer of any kind in the coffee area. A laundered but badly stained towel in our bathroom. A shower that didn't work in one of our friend's rooms (they were moved to another room after calling management).
In fairness, there were positives. Decent Keurig coffee, a nice pool area with a clean pool and a firepit. Nifty room decor. And that's it.
There's a lot more that was completely unacceptable about our experience here. But when I wrote it up in Word and copied it here, I was WAY over the character limit. Suffice it to say that this place is awful. This is sad, because it looks like it was a hoot to stay at in its heyday, but that day is gone.
Bottom line: You can NOT run a business in the service sector without providing service. Perhaps the Rendezvous is trying to run an entirely automated hotel the way that some fast food places are trying to go completely automated. Well big surprise: this does not work. It's a terrible idea and it makes it appear that no one really cares at all about the hotel or its guests.
And yeah, room security really does matter.
Mike sez do NOT check it out under any circumstances.