Read Palisades Tahoe Lodge Reviews

$25 for any extra towels

Beautiful location and rooms were affordable.

Palisades Tahoe Lodge (formerly SV Lodge) has been my winter go-to for many years. The rooms have always been a bit beat up and sometimes not as clean as one might hope, but we have many great memories of staying here with our children, multi-family group trips, and other ski adventures. And the stellar location made up for the negatives. Unfortunately, the current, utterly inflexible reservation policy has ruined this place for me. I've rarely ever changed or cancelled a hotel reservation, but this year has been a tough one. In January, when we were dealing with catastrophic storms, flooding and a week without power at home, we finally decided we had no choice but to cancel a planned ski trip. Palisades Tahoe Lodge refused to help in any way with rescheduling or modifying the reservation. We had to pay for an unused night and cancel the rest of the reservation. Yes, I guess we should have gotten the trip insurance, but who does that to a customer in the middle of a natural disaster? They claim it's "their duty to their owners and customers alike". Hmm... I don't see how this benefits customers, the owner lost two nights out of a three night reservation, and the management lost much goodwill. Now I have a reservation again, but my friends and I had our wires crossed and I made it for one day earlier than they expected. Realizing the error, I tried to move the reservation out by ONE DAY (the next day is available). Again Palisades Tahoe Lodge refused to make any change, saying our only option is to forfeit the full night's charge. Clearly my mistake, but again how does this serve anyone? Instead of taking advantage of a chance to take care of us despite our screwup, and leave us happy and grateful, we are left dumbfounded at such poor service. Hopefully I can find others to go or some other way to salvage the mess. I contrast this with a very nice hotel with owner rooms at another resort in the Eastern Sierra where I stayed two weeks ago. We had reservations for early March, but as you know, this season has been one for the history books. Bad weather and road closures were a problem for the dates we reserved. When I asked about the situation and whether they recommended we try to keep the reservation, they said we were welcome to try and make it but offered to let us cancel free of charge or reschedule to a later date. We rescheduled, and it was a fabulous experience. As one of our party put it "I really don't want anything to do with Palisades Tahoe Lodge after this. I'll have spent as much on cancellations as nights there."

My experience with this place is that you can expect noise problems about half the time, inadequate or broken kitchen appliances about 1/3 of the time, and failure to honor room requests most of the time. It's at the low end of ski-in ski-out at Palisades, though, so my experience is also that no amount of complaining will help. But as long as you accept that and lower your expectations, you probably won't be disappointed.