Great hotel. Wonderful staff were very helpful in getting us a nice fourth floor room overlooking Houghton Lake. Adequete? breakfast buffet. Rooms were clean, quite, and comfortable. Nice beach with quite a few domesticated ducks - cuties!

This was our first trip to Houghton Lake. Decided to stay here for a few nights instead of making the trek to Traverse City when we found a great deal from Groupon. Overall, the hotel, though dated, was pretty nice. It looked like the lobby and elevator had recently been renovated, but not the rooms. Our Groupon was for a Jacuzzi room, which is not available with a lake-view. There are only, I think, 4 rooms at the hotel that have no balcony whatsoever (not even of the parking lot) and we got one of those, which was a bummer.

Our room had a strange smell to it. It wasn't overbearing, but it was there and noticable everytime we walked into the room. The jacuzzi was large and wonderful, however the shower was very small and the shelf wasn't even large enough to hold shampoo & conditioner at the same time.

The beach was small, but clean, for the most part. My 4 year old enjoyed it. They have 2 fire pits, several plastic chairs and I think even some plastic sand toys for kids. There are a lot of ducks there that aparently get fed a lot because they come right up to you. Which was cute at first, but then I got to thinking about all of the duck poop that must be in the water....

The game room is a joke with only about 3 working games and they wanted $1 to play pac man. The pool was pretty nice but had a lot of sand in the bottom from people not rinsing before they got in. The temperature was nice though.The hot tub was nice as well. My son really liked the playscape, but it was small.

The continental breakfast was the best I have seen in a while. Lots of choices, and plenty of everything.

Overall, if you're looking for a place to stay in Houghton Lake, I would recommend this hotel. However, the town itself didn't seem very family-oriented. Couldn't find a decent beach/playground anywhere. There was putt-putt golf just down the road, which was fun. But if you don't have a boat, and are looking for a fun beach, I would look elsewhere.

I found out about this hotel from an advertisement online and remembered it when we were up in northern Michigan, and I can honestly say this is pure Michigan it was fantastic! our room was very clean and fully equipped with a great bed and nice new towels, fridge, microwave, and breakfast included, the staff was very good and helpful with anything from golfing, food, and anything you needed to make your stay comfy, we brought our jetski and we had a great spot to dock it right on the hotel lakefront property, I recommend this beautiful place to all my family and friends, enjoy and remember vinman gives this hotel thumbs UP!

I stayed here for 2 nights with my school age boys, when leaving today I spoke with the nicest worker about a later check-out during breakfast - never giving my name she figured out which room I was in and called to verify a later check out, I was impressed and even let us change from our beach clothes to our "drive home clothes" in an empty room after enjoying the beach for a few hours. When checking in our room smelled of smoke and they moved us to a room without a balcany, but I could not handle how bad the non-smoking room smelled. In the evening I turned on the AC and it barely worked and completely stopped 30 min later after the manager came up to look and she told me to open a window since it was going to be cool that night, I was up all night listening to people in and out of the hotel and cars passing since my room was above the entrance to the hotel. I called again about the AC in the morning and after being gone all day to Sleeping Bear I was very happy that the AC was fixed and I slept much better!

The room was decent, however the carpets/bedding need replacing (stains/burn hole), the bathroom needs to be totally re-done it was old looking - clean but many grout patches and water stains everywhere, really nasty looking but you knew it had been cleaned. The free breakfast was GREAT, very good with your basic carbs and saved me$ and time from having to go out. The pool was dirty, full of sand - the kids swam... The beach was really nice, loved the chairs and umbrella but ants everywhere in the sand and the water was a little rocky.

I used a Groupon, otherwise I don't think I would have stayed... Great for the Groupon value