Desert Gardens - A member of Novotel Hotels 4.5 stars

The room was ok twin double beds usual amenities + fridge. A good shower. The location not so good basically in the middle of know where. There are other hotels shops restaurants a supermarket not much choice in supermarket if any without a microwave in your room. There is some takeaways a long walk from hotel. Ok for 1or2 night stay. Breakfast i can't comment on as we left at 4.30am to catch the sunrise. the hotel did provide us with breakfast bags [reusable] which were good Cereal Milk OJ Yoghurt bar An Apple bottled water Mixed Fruit Pot and Crackers&Cheese.

Most well appointed rooms...lucky to have one facing Uluru to watch both sunset and rise. Great bed. Spacious room with comfortable lounge seating and balcony. Ample towels in bathroom. There are two restaurants on site: one prestigious and the only a little more casual. Beautiful environment. Well worth considering in travelling to the heart of Australia.

This is a good resort in general, but obviously it has monopoly and that is obvious in one or two areas. We stayed at the Desert Gardens Hotel which is one of several on the resort. The rooms look more attractive from the front than the back, but are very well appointed and comfortable. Food is good, but the beer tends to be too many “Craft” style beers which I am not over keen on. There are things to do within the resort, but it is obvious there is a reliance for you to book the tours to Uluru and Kata Tjuṯa. There are a big variety of tours you can do. In themselves, they are good value (we went on the excellent Uluru Sunset and Bar B Q tour which is about 4 x hours and includes a fascinating astronomy talk apart from the other things). However, you are starting to look at serious money if you want to do multiple tours, so be aware. Most of the resort is “Cashless” with the exception of a small supermarket, Post Office and fuel station. The “Cashless” stance is one I don’t feel comfortable about in general, but an issue on the first day really made me feel uncomfortable. To put this into context, many places I have seen in Australia accept cash still, but levy a surcharge for card payments (including Debit and Credit). This is often hidden in the small print and if they do not accept cash, it is a bit naughty to add a surcharge to a Debit card, although I can understand with a Credit card. At this resort they make it quite clear that Debit cards will NOT incur a surcharge. They were undergoing a system upgrade whilst we were there and were told to be patient, and this upgrade may have been a reason for the fact I was charged more than once for using my Debit card. A few complaints later and I had the surcharges refunded. I found that sometimes when you use a “Chip & Pin” transaction they have to “override” to cut the surcharge out. “Contactless” didn’t seem to be an issue, but as my card only allows 5 x such transactions before a “C&P” is required (and I prefer this method), my tip would be to get your receipt and check. Our tour operator enquired twice (this was in July 2024) about a “Bed & Breakfast” package, but were told they are not available. They are and even if you don’t pre-book I was advised that you can add the option on when you check for a heavily discounted breakfast. Out of goodwill on our final morning the restaurant gave us such discounted breakfast. One final thing I would say is, that if you have an electronic device, make sure the time updates to “Darwin” time. If it doesn’t automatically, manually update it. We had 4 x devices and only 1 x updated whereas the other 3 updated to Adelaide time which is +1 x hour. We didn’t realise that for nearly 24 x hours, but as we had nothing time specific to do it didn’t matter!

Unfortunately only stayed one night at this hotel with our group that was visiting Ayer's Rock. I wanted to spend more time to be able to enjoy the grounds, pool and surrounding areas. Our room was spacious and comfortable. The dining room was beautiful and had an amazing breakfast buffet.

i gave it a 3 cause the TV had no YouTube plus there is bugs in my room like a dead beeteal with a head chopped of ,a centipied climbing in my room. those are the negative things now we are gonna take about positive things like the bed is bouncy ,it's supposed to be.