Harrah's Gulf Coast Hotel & Casino in Biloxi

My husband and I just returned from a Harrahs comped charter. We'd never been to Biloxi before and seeing it was on the Gulf and free we decided to make it our first post vaccine trip. What a disappointment? The hotel is old, carpets in the room were so dirty and stained, I've never seen anything like it in hotels around the world. There were no information pamphlets in the room with hotel information and despite them having no housekeeping during your visit, only 3 bath towels in the room for a 3 night stay for 2 people. We called for extra towels but were told they are limited. We didn't get them the first time we called, so had to call again (same with our luggage from the bell desk, no answer, left message, no luggage). The casino is very, very small. If you play video poker, stay elsewhere as they only have 4 quarter regular Game King Machines. The rest are dollars, or specialty triple, ten times, etc games. They seemed to have a decent selection of popular slots. None of the casinos are really close to each other, they are all in clusters of one or two and far enough you have to take a taxi or Uber unless you like to walk several miles. There is a trolley that goes casino to casino but no posted pick up times or even little signs to tell you where they stop. You have to ask around at the hotel. Most people said they come once an hour so in reality, they're no help at all unless you don't mind waiting 30--60 minutes. I literally have never seen any tourist destination so poorly organized or kept up. The VP machines were set so tight, if you got lucky enough to get a 4 of a kind after spending a few hundred dollars, the machine would take it all back without even throwing up a full house. I've played VP everywhere in this country and these were the tightest machines I've ever played. I saw no one win decent money unless they were playing the triple or higher hand machines. My mom did ok on a slot machine (she played the same machine for 3 days) and ended up only $100 down. We did see a woman win 17K on a penny machine but she was playing max coins (around $3 spin). The diner food there was average to below average. The Magnolia house was decent (we had only several appetizers that were all above average. The pool was the best thing, heated, huge, clean. There is no real beach or ocean there, just a body of muddy water due to the barrier islands. Ship Island which is supposedly filled with pristine Gulf beaches was closed. We only went to two other casinos, the Golden Nugget (more VP machines, bigger casino, you can win there) and the Beau Rivage which is beautiful and similar to Vegas resorts. Generally in the Harrah's area, there is nothing to do, no shops, tourist destinations, historical sites, NADA. The best thing about it was the people, all friendly. A story worthy of being printed. At the Golden Nugget, we asked that they call us a taxi to go to Beau Rivage after they said it usually takes about 5-10 minutes to get one(we had waited at Harrahs 30 minutes the night before with a no show). After 25 minutes the cab manager(Don) said his manager (Taylor) was going to drive us over to the Beau Rivage. She not only drove us but took us in a limousine! Both Don and Taylor deserve raises and commendations. That's southern hospitality!Overall though, even the great people in Biloxi are not enough to make us come back. The city manager/mayor need really look at the tourists that come there (mostly gamblers on charters), make it easy for them to get from casino to casino. Provide information on shopping venues, movie theaters and every other possible recreation in a 50 mile radius in every hotel room. Harrah's needs to spend the money to renovate their rooms or at the very least, get new carpeting throughout (the mattresses were decent). Casinos need to look at their payout percentage and make them more than competitive with other similar gambling destinations. On our charter of about 200 people the majority of people said they would never come back. That's a pretty bad indictment.

We visited Biloxi for the first time ever at the end of March 2021. We typically travel to Vegas, but due to COVID we aren't ready to get on an airplane, so we decided to take a road trip to MS. We had 6 nights comped at Harrah's in a Gulf View King Room. The room we received was on the side of the hotel overlooking a dirt parking lot with a side view of the Gulf. The room was clean and comfortable and we had no complaints, only wished we had the gulf front view that our host had reserved for us. We had breakfast several times at Mix and Mingle where were placed the order using the link that was texted to us and received a text when our food was ready for pick up. The food was fresh and delicious. Mix and Mingle was open daily but closed at 10pm. The only option after that was Steak and Shake which was busy late at night with long waits for food. Starbucks closed at 2pm daily. Magnolia House was open only Thursday - Sunday (I believe). There is a frozen yogurt machine in the little alcove on the way to the elevators which was barely serviced during our stay. One night we stopped for frozen yogurt and purchased 2 cups and the 2nd cup came out empty. We noticed the next two days it had still not been serviced, however, I'm not sure if Harrah's owns the machine or if an outside company services it similar to a vending machine/vending company. Harrah's casino is tiny compared to the others and the slots did not pay. Drink service was spotty, and slot machines appeared to be old - I found that the card readers on several of the slot machines did not read my players card, as a matter of fact, we spent hours in the casino on our final night and I did not get credit for any play that night. We had an issue with our toilet, and asked a member of the housekeeping staff who was out in the hallway to help, and she told us we'd need to contact maintenance. We called the front desk who continually forwarded us to maintenance where no one answered. Finally after an hour, we were able to get ahold of maintenance to come fix the toilet. It was annoying that someone from housekeeping or from the front desk couldn't send maintenance up to the room rather than have us call directly. The other issue that we had was on our last evening. We spent the afternoon at the pool and had placed my husband's wallet and my purse in the safe. At 5pm, my husband returned to the room to get his wallet as we wanted to go to the gift shop and buy a couple souvenirs before returning to the room as we were leaving very early the next morning and the gift shop closes early. The safe would not open. Upon calling maintenance, and them coming to our room, it was determined that the safe was not going to open. They attempted several codes, they attempted to reset it, they attempted several different ways to open it including using a drill. We told them that we had to shower and make a 7pm dinner reservation at Golden Nugget. It was 2.5 hours later when they opened the safe with a crowbar. We missed our reservation, and were offered a reservation at Magnolia House with a $60 dining credit which we accepted only because we couldn't get a later reservation at Golden Nugget. We thought after losing 2.5 hours of our final night's vacation, having 2-3 maintenance employees in our room for 2.5 hours, and losing our dinner reservation, we would have received a comped meal instead of a $60 credit, which barely covered one steak, but we weren't going to argue at that point, as we had already lost most of our final night of vacation considering we had to get up at 4:30am the next morning to depart. The housekeeping staff was great, the pool staff was great (one day there were no pool towels - they said the delivery didn't come, so we had to go back up to our room and get bath towels), the staff at Mix and Mingle was great, but overall, not the best customer service and we probably won't travel to Biloxi again.

Husband and I flew down here on a charter by Swift air we were a half hour late boarding a half hour late getting here nobody was organized to say the least. The plane is awful you’re on top of each other with no leg room my husband had marks on his knees after the two hour flight from Akron Canton Airport when we arrived at the hotel that was another mess in itself they knew 300 people were coming but nobody was assigned the rooms yet are you kidding me? After standing in line once again for a half an hour to get up to the front desk we were greeted by a rude hostess if this is how the people are here I don’t think I want to come back they are rude everywhere you go around here but anyway needless to say our room wasn’t ready so we had to wait for that.you are very limited on your options of where to eat here and with everybody coming in everything was full and overpriced. We finally got a room two hours later we had a beautiful view of a junkyard out our window along the back road that look like a crack shop not very safe. We called for extra towels this morning and the girl was very rude on the phone at housekeeping and needless to say she never after two hours of waiting she never brought them up we’ve only been here two days and I’m ready to leave and never come back. We did take the trolley last night which we thoroughly enjoyed over to the Beau rivage which if you come here you have to do it is simply beautiful and the food there is delicious! So if you do come to Biloxi please skip hair is because you will not be satisfied!!

Casino is small and machines are tight. Bus entrance was dinghy and nothing was pretty. The location was good. The hopper was awesome although drivers weren’t very friendly. This was our least favorite of the casinos in the area.

So many reasons why this trip went bad but long story short, absolutely awful customer service and no communication. We know things happen but when no one wants to own up to the issues (multiple people) nor help with solutions, that is not ok. First time visiting and we will never go back.