How to judge a hotel's padel setup before you book

A hotel that says it has padel could mean a floodlit pair of courts with a resident coach, or one panoramic court behind the tennis wall that three hundred guests share. Both are “padel on site”. The listing rarely distinguishes them, so here is what the numbers do and do not tell you.

Key figures

Every row is counted against the number of properties where we hold any answer at all, not against the whole directory — most fields are unstated for most properties, and a percentage of 1,865 would understate all of them.

What	Confirmed	Out of	Where we hold any answer
Court count recorded	1,786	1,865	96%
One or two courts	1,498	1,786	84% of those with a count
Court use included for guests	75	292	26% of those with an access answer
Court use charged	210	292	72% of those with an access answer
A coach on site	181	186	10% of the directory has any answer
Racket hire	185	189	10% of the directory has any answer

Start with the court count, and read it correctly

Across the 1,786 properties in this directory where we could confirm a number, 54% have exactly one court and another 30% have two. Five out of six hotels with padel have one or two courts.

That single number carries more than it looks like it does:

• One court is an amenity. It will be bookable in one-hour slots, and in a full hotel in July those slots go early. Fine if you want a game every other morning; not a holiday built around padel.
• Two courts is the point at which a hotel can run a friendly doubles session without the rest of the guests waiting.
• Four or more — 165 properties here — is a hotel that has decided padel is a reason people come, rather than a facility they happen to own. That is usually where you find a coach, a ball machine and a fixed lesson timetable.
• Seven or more — 29 properties — is a venue in its own right, generally with a club attached that non-residents also use. Worth knowing, because it cuts both ways: better facilities, more competition for slots.

You can browse hotels with four or more courts directly.

The four things a listing almost never tells you

We record these fields, and the honest position is that they are mostly empty — which is itself the useful finding, because it means you cannot answer these from any listing and have to ask.

Is court time included, or charged? We have a confirmed answer for 292 of 1,865 properties. Of those, 210 charge, 75 include it, 1 reserves the court for members, and 6 open it only to people staying without saying what it costs. That is far too small a sample to generalise from, and we are not going to pretend otherwise — but it does tell you that “the hotel has a court” and “you can play for free” are separate questions.

Is there a coach? Confirmed for 181 properties. We only have any recorded value for 186, so the real figure is unknown rather than low. See booking a padel coaching week.

Can you hire a racket? Confirmed for 44. Same caveat, and the practical answer is in what to pack: assume not.

Is the court covered? 71 of the 1,105 properties where we recorded it. This is the one that ruins a winter trip — see indoor and outdoor courts.

What to actually ask

One email to the hotel, before booking, covering the things no page answers:

1. How many courts, and are they shared with a club or with non-residents?
2. How do guests book a slot, how far ahead, and is there a charge?
3. Are rackets and balls available, and at what price?
4. Is any court covered or floodlit? (Floodlighting decides whether you can play after 18:00 in winter.)
5. Is there a coach on site, or a club nearby that takes visitors?

If the answer to (1) is “one court” and you are travelling in August, ask what happens when it is booked out.

How we know any of this

Each listing on this site shows how well evidenced it is, because a directory that treats a hotel’s own photograph and a third-party mention as the same thing is not worth reading. Over half our records rest on a single directory listing and say so. The verification method explains the three levels, and the dataset publishes the counts with their denominators.

The failure we cannot catch automatically is a property listed with padel whose courts are actually at a club down the road. If you find one, telling us is the single most useful thing you can do.