Harbour Beach Resort (Daytona Beach, Florida)

My wife and I are owners at the Westgate in Gatlinburg, TN, and if anyone has been there they know it’s great. It is VERY nice.

This was my wife and I one year wedding anniversary and we wanted to go to the beach, so we exchanged our week to the Westgate in Daytona Beach.

Let me tell you, this place in Daytona is a DUMP.

Westgate needs to sell their space there and move out. I’m actually typing this up from the Coconut Palm Spring resort in New Symrna Beach, just south of Daytona.

I called Westgate and complained and they got Interval on the phone, and they moved me down here.

The customer service Westgate and Interval provided was great, they were very responsive and willing to make it right.

I’ll never go back to Westgate Daytona Beach. Not only is the building rough, the whole area around it is rough.

Stay away from here, stay away from Daytona altogether. Trust me….

I have never been to a Westgate like this one…..

Day 1 – arrive and go to office, located next to a CLOSED down Denny’s….I had read on the message board that you could only get new clean towels and sheets on Wednesdays…when I questioned the person in the “office” about this she stated that is correct…there were 6 towels and 6 wash clothes in each room and you could come down for more on Wed….well when there are four in your party this would mean that you would each have one for the next 5 days…not sure about you but I use a clean one each day to wash my face…..

Night of day 1 – there is a large bed in one of the rooms, as well as a pull out sofa in the “living” room….my son, was sleeping on this…about 2 in the morning he woke us up to tell us that he had fleas on him…sure enough…the bed was infested with fleas…not sand fleas but fleas from an animal. I called the 24 hour number the next morning and the person that called back was very nice….when we went to the “office” to meet with the person on duty the next morning she acted like we were an inconvenience to her…not sure how that was but she also insisted that they were not fleas in my sons head…but sand fleas…having owned animals in the past I tried to explain to her that I knew the difference….she stated that I did not understand…I have the fleas in a plastic baggie to show her….but….dumb person that I am I was wrong and really making them have to work for the day…she offered to try to find me another room when I asked them to remove the couch and bring in a new one…why should I have to move…just bring me a new couch….well they did arrive about 2-3 in the afternoon to replace the mattress in the couch and even brought CLEAN sheets….

While the maintenance man was there I mentioned that the ice machine in the freezer did not work – we had to purchase ice….as none of the ice machines had any in the building….he proceeded to tell me that it HAD to work, he just put in a new one…I advised him WELL it did not….as he then looked to check and make sure I knew what I was talking about…..that night my husband pulled the ref out and they had forgotten to hook the water back up…huh, that could be why it did not work…

As my title says, the pool was very nice… the only problem with that was that you needed a key to access the pool from inside the building as well as the beach….this was a huge inconvenience if there were several in your party as you only received one key and needed it at all times.

On the 2nd day there, the lock to get to the beach did not work, so maintenance came out and taped the lock so that we could all access the beach from the pool…well now I know why it was important to keep it locked…we had all kinds of guest from the beach enjoy our pool that day as well…

All I can say is NEVER again…..

And yes, there was a large colony of sand fleas that lived in our room too…..what a trip.

I stayed here January 25th and 26th of 2005.

I so love the Westgate Resorts in the Orlando area that I figured this would have the same standards but it was not even close.

First, this is not a Westgate property but really the Harbor Beach in which Westgate has purchased some units.

The hallways are dark, there is a warning in the laundry room about your clothes being stolen and neither dryer worked.

If you want to get to your room after 6 PM you have to go through the adjoining Denny’s restaurant to get into the building.

Having grown up in Daytona I realize what a hurricane can do but a lot of what I dealt with had nothing to do with the hurricanes.

The door to the patio would not open, light bulbs missing in several lamps, rude and uncaring staff, and chipped tiles on the floors just to name a few.

The elevators were filthy with open electrical panels. In all fairness, the unit was clean (not the dishes) but that is about the only good thing I can say about it.

We should have known there was going to be problems when we drove around trying to find the Westgate Daytona and couldn’t find it.

We drove to the address and the hotel there was the Harbour Lights hotel. We went in and found out that the Westgate had purchased some units from this dump.

Rooms at the Harbour Lights hotel ranged from $60-80 a night. For the Westgate part it was $99-150 for the same hotel.

The hotel only has two elevators and one was broken. It would take 15 minutes sometimes to use the only elevator they had.

The hot tub was also broken. We had to wait for 30 minutes for our room to be ready while they were cleaning it.

When we arrived in our room, it had a weird smell to it. They had just mopped the floors but our feet on the bottoms were black after 30 minutes of walking on the floor.

My husband took a white towel to dry the floor and the towel was as dirty as our feet. We realized that they only spray Frebreeze on the comforters because it was very dirty looking but smelled like Frebreeze. Under the bed was filthy and looked like it had never been cleaned under.

We stayed one night and left the next day.

They made us pay for all the days we had reserved except one plus a cancellation fee. We also had to rent a crib because they do not have any on the premises.

The Westgate misrepresents itself in their ads for this resort.

It we had known this was not a full Westgate resort, we would have gone elsewhere in the beginning. We will never stay at this or any other Westgate property again.

When we were at Westgate there were hardly ever any Westgate employees there.

We didn’t have an alarm clock in our room and we had no clean towels the whole week that we were there.

Our room was not cleaned and there was no cleaning supplies left there for me to clean with. I had to go buy a dust mop and dustpan so that I could clean the room myself. What they don’t tell you is that Westgate is in the same hotel as Harbor Beach and the Harbor Beach employees are rude if you are Westgate guest.

Our son and his family went with us and they were put four rooms away from us, so don’t count on connecting rooms are even rooms that are side by side.

Furthermore, I smoke and we asked for a smoking room. Instead of being honest and saying that they have no smoking rooms they took the reservation and let us find out after we got there that all they offer are non-smoking rooms.

Of course with the cancellation policy that they have, you are stuck with the reservation that you have made.

Never mind that they were not upfront and honest.

About the only thing good was that there were two bathrooms and two televisions.

That came in real handy since we had the grandkids travelling with us. The grandkids were the reason that I needed the cleaning supplies and dust mop.