Although a busy, popular summer destination, there are suprisingly few consistently highly-rated hotels in Traverse City. We were pretty disappointed by our last choice, but had higher hopes for the Grand Beach, highly rated by several other Trip Advisor users. It was not awful, but we wouldn't choose it again. The most positive aspect is a very nice soft sand beach, great for little kids. The breakfast is pretty minimal, but a nice convenience, and the rooms have a small fridge.
But the negatives will lead us to try elsewhere for our next visit. The most noticeable was the smell. Although we booked a nonsmoking room, such rooms were only on one side of our hallway, and all the rooms right across the hall were smoking. Not surprisingly, the entire hall reeked of stale smoke, and so did our room. We tried to keep the screen door open as much as possible, but the shreiking from the beach as late as midnight -2AM sometimes made that hard. The hotel apparently has one building that is completely nonsmoking, but if you are not there, your room will stink. Also, although the hotel advertises free wireless access, in all rooms, we couldn't connect from our room at all during our entire stay, and couldn't even connect from the lobby most of the time, so that was really not true advertising. As the beach access is not that important to us (there are nice public beaches nearby), next time we'll opt for a truly nonsmoking property, and maybe a bit quieter.

We stay at this hotel for five days and were very pleased with the experience. Our room on was the third floor, overlooking the beach and Traverse Bay. The second and third floors have balconies. If you stay on the first floor you have a small open patio and can step right out onto the sand. There’s a breakfast included and the gal who manages the breakfast room was friendly and efficient and kept things well-stocked.

This is a fairly low-service hotel. You’re on your own to get your bags to your room.

The water temperature in Traverse Bay was a bit cool, but not too cool for swimming. Since this is a bay the waves never get more than a foot or two. The beach is sandy and shallow. Even a couple hundred feet from the shore it’s only 3-4 feet deep. There’s an indoor pool and hot tub.

The property doesn’t have a restaurant. Downtown Traverse City is about 10 minutes away. There are plenty of good restaurants and nice shops.

A couple minor complaints: The housekeeping was a bit sloppy and the wireless internet service in our room was very, very slow.

I took a weekend vacation to Traverse City for my birthday with my boyfriend. Being the general manager of a resort, I am pretty nit-picky with hotels, so I almost always try and see a room first before booking it. After driving up and down the same road a few different times and looking at several different hotels we stopped at the Grand Beach Resort Hotel.

I have to say, for the money, we got a spectacular room! Compared to what else we were shown in other hotels, it was by far the best we'd seen. We stayed in a Jacuzzi room with a king bed and large balcony. We took the Jacuzzi tub over the view and were not at all disappointed! We even talked that the waterfall from the golf course across the street gave it a cute atmospheric jump. Great updates had been made to the room, it was very much up to date!

The only room available was a smoking room, but to my astonishment, it didn't have that left-over, stale smoke smell. The room smelled very clean. The room was in fact very clean and very spacious.

I couldn't have been happier with the entire experience. My thanks to the staff and management for making my birthday spectacular

I booked this because it ranked #1 on tripadvisor but was little disappointed. First off, it doesn't feel like a resort but more like a regular motel. Yes, the room was a bit larger than a regular room with microwave, extra sink etc., but it smelled damp and looked like it needed a revamp (wet stains on ceiling, lose toilet paper holder etc). Setting and beach is great but there are lots of places along the same road and I wonder if their beaches aren't the same. Breakfast was also pretty standard as you'd expect in most places - self service, styrofoam plates, plastic cutlery...So, while it wasn't bad I don't think I'd go back- I"d look for a place with a better price-return ratio. It's also quite far away form the city center, so don't go there unless you are willing to drive.