Book a Shell Island Cottage

"Pool area was great. Good breakfast. We had a great time."

"Awesome price and even allowed our dog to stay with us. Friendly staff and definitely will be booking here again"

"Love the view."

"Steps from the beach. Loved the pool"

"our stay was overall okay. i’m not a very picky person, firstly. i don’t have to stay at the nicest place to enjoy myself. i can overlook a lot of things. but not when the “things” start stacking up. i’ll start with the positives. the hotel is steps from the beach, view is amazing, a/c in our room was icy cold, a nice surprise was that our room had a full sized fridge and kitchen sink. the staff were all very friendly, kind, and helpful. negatives though, outweighed the positives unfortunately. i would never want to stay here again, nor recommend it to a friend. our room smelled like mildew. we didn’t notice it at first, because we got there right at check in, and the room smelled like it was freshly cleaned. we were in and out pretty quick, just dropping our belongings off and changing clothes. when we got back to the room, the mildew smell was pretty strong. it flared my husbands asthma up the first night. we ended up having to leave our balcony door open for the rest of our stay to keep his asthma symptoms stable. the room very clearly had tons of water damage. the ceiling was peeling, and stained heavily with water stains. the carpet was absolutely terrible. it felt tacky under our feet, and we wore socks the whole time. it was also damp. probably the source of the mildew smell if i had to guess. the bottoms of our feet were black within mins if we didn’t. i have plenty more to say but out of characters. i’ll finish my review on google. "

"hot tub had trash floating in it, coke machine was out of my soda, no wifi in room 606. stay was ok, but nothing I want to repeat in the future"

"I stay here every year, usually 2x a year, with my family. Weve always loved it, but since By the Sea Resorts bought Palmetto Inn too, it seems to slowly be going down. The staff is great. The room was clean. Really the only issue was that the mattresses absolutely suck. The pillows were equally as horrible & uncomfortable. Im unsure what happened, as the beds were great even as recently as October 2025. And as much as they've raised their prices, a decent bed & pillows shouldny be too much to ask for. The coffee is awful & so weak, I barely knew it was coffee. Only half the cable channels worked, the remote only worked the volume. Please fix the bed problems. Everyone will benefit from it."

"You should get free umbrellas for the beach"

"The bar was great my room overlooked the beach. I had to buy Clorox wipes to touch up the wall that was right by my bed, which had five black smudges and two things that looked like either boogers or mud. I feel like you should pressure wash the halls outside the rooms because people go in bare feet a lot and it’s kind of gross. But we really like this hotel. We always buy a broom to sweep the sand. Our bathroom was a little bit disappointing, but functional. There were hair ties on the floor from other people before us and the bathroom plugged did didn’t work well, and there was like stuff in the tub and one of the things was torn off that was supposed to hold body wash. All in all I think you’ve done pretty well with the place being that it’s so old but I just think a little TLC would make it cleaner and you should replace the missing chess pieces. They’re really cool. "