Indoor and outdoor padel courts, and playing in winter

Padel is played outdoors far more often than tennis is, and hotel padel especially so — the court is usually a slab beside the pool. That is fine in May and a problem in January, and it is the single fact most likely to spoil a trip booked on a photograph taken in summer.

Key figures

What	Count	Out of
Courts confirmed covered	87	1,149 where we know either way
No record either way	716	1,865 properties
Properties in the directory	1,865	88 countries

Covered courts are rarer than you would guess

Of the properties where we recorded whether the court is covered — 1,149 of 1,865 — only 87 have an indoor court.

Both halves of that sentence matter. Indoor courts really are uncommon at hotels. But we have no record either way for 716 properties, so the true number is higher than 87 and we do not know by how much. A hotel is not on the indoor list because we confirmed it is outdoor-only; it is missing because nobody checked. Ask rather than assume, in either direction.

What “indoor” is actually describing

Three quite different things get called indoor, and they are not equivalent:

• A permanent hall. Walls, roof, lighting, sometimes heating. Weatherproof, and the only version that works in a northern winter. This is the norm in Sweden, which is why a country with 85 properties in this directory has a padel culture out of all proportion to its size.
• A canopy or roof over an otherwise open court. Keeps the rain off the surface and nothing off you. Good in a Mediterranean shower, useless at 4°C in a crosswind.
• A retractable or seasonal cover. Up for winter, down for summer. Worth asking specifically when you are travelling, because the answer changes by month.

If it matters to your trip, ask which of the three it is. “Indoor court” in a hotel’s own marketing covers all of them.

The shoulder seasons matter more than winter

Southern Europe in December is a genuine question. Southern Europe in March and October is where most people get caught out: the weather is usually fine, and when it is not there is no fallback, and an outdoor court after rain is unplayable for hours rather than minutes.

Two practical consequences:

• In spring and autumn, a hotel with two courts is meaningfully better than one, because a wet morning does not wipe out the day for everyone at once.
• Floodlighting is worth more than covering in the shoulder seasons. Sunset in Andalusia in late October is around 18:30, which removes the entire after-dinner slot. Lighting is not a field we record at all, so this one is always a question for the hotel.

Heat is the other half of the problem

The mirror image, and less often discussed: an outdoor court in Andalusia, the Algarve or the Gulf in July is unusable between roughly 11:00 and 18:00. In practice a summer padel holiday means playing early, which is fine if you plan for it and miserable if you booked expecting an afternoon game.

Where a covered court exists in a hot climate it is often about shade rather than rain, and it may be the best court on the property in August.

Where to look

• Hotels with indoor padel courts — the 72 we have confirmed, and the caveat above applies to every one of the properties not on it.
• Sweden, Italy and Spain each clear the threshold for their own indoor collections, linked from that page.
• How to judge a hotel’s padel setup for the rest of the questions worth asking in the same email.