Soul Apartments review – Surfers Paradise luxury accommodation

If you’re looking for Gold Coast luxury accommodation, you can’t go past the incredible Soul Apartments – located at the beach, right in the middle of Surfers Paradise – plus we have a discount hack for you, too!

Is Soul really the best hotel on the Gold Coast?

There are a lot of great resorts up and down Queensland’s Gold Coast, but few have both luxury and location nailed. Soul is a very popular five-star Gold Coast hotel for the super-rich from all around the world. The main entrance looks like something out of Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous – Maserati’s, stretch-Mercedes and Ferraris of Soul’s affluent guests abound.

Yay – we’re at Soul Apartments on the Gold Coast!

Some guests live there, some are on holiday – some even stay for several months over winter. The lifts are full of supermarket deliveries to the rooms of Dubai nationals taking time-out from the heat of the Emirates in Summer, and the odd nanny escorting children down to the pool for a swim. People-watching is just part of the fascinating experience of staying at Soul!

The best accommodation location in Surfers Paradise

Soul is widely recognised as the best-located luxury apartments in Surfers Paradise – and for good reason – it’s smack-bang in the centre of Surfers Paradise, and directly opposite the beach front. This makes for unparalleled convenience, and absolute ocean views.

The perfect white sands of Surfers Paradise beach are just a few steps away from Soul

Walk out of the Soul hotel’s front doors, and you’ll find yourself across the road from the world’s most beautiful beaches – Surfers Paradise beach – famous for it’s clean white sands and crystal-blue rolling waves. Take the kids for a splash in the sea under the careful watch of the Gold Coast life-saving club, or just go for a stroll along the beautiful esplanade – also home of the fascinating Night Markets three times a week.

Sea World is just minutes away from Soul – Photo credit: Sea World

If you plan on taking the kids to a theme park during your visit to Queensland, Sea World is just five minutes drive up the road. Dreamworld and Movie World are only about twenty minutes drive away, too.

The iconic Surfers Paradise metal archway sign and busy pedestrian Cavill Avenue are right next door – home of touristy shopping, cheap foot-massages and family entertainment – everything you need for a fun, relaxed holiday – and at Soul, you’re staying in the centre  of it all.

Cavill Mall is right next door to Soul, with direct access via the Soul Boardwalk

Our two-bedroom Soul Apartment

Staying at Soul apartments is everything you would expect from a five star hotel. Full digital security access, with tags or cards for doors and elevators. Stylish, expensive décor with immaculately maintained interiors and exteriors.

Each apartment features a spacious open-plan lounge and dining area, and is elegantly furnished throughout. Marble-topped tables, plush cushions, glass and mirrors complete the modern luxury look and feel of these apartments. Floor-to-ceiling windows monopolise that fabulous Gold Coast view.

Even though this is Queensland, it still gets cool in the evenings in winter. The apartment has reverse-cycle climate control to keep things at the right temperature, no matter what time of year it is.

The open plan lounge and dining area is the perfect living space for the family

The apartment layout and space gives a family of four plenty of room for togetherness, or alone time too! The lounges are super-comfy, and a great spot to settle down when you’ve all dropped from Gold Coast too-much-fun-exhaustion and just need some quiet-time to watch a family movie together.

There is a plethora of modern appliances throughout the apartment too. Stero systems, flat screen TVs in each room, a bluetooth DVD player, and well-optioned Foxtel Pay TV too.

The bedrooms

We stayed in a two bedroom apartment, however Soul three bedroom apartments are also available for larger families.

Our master bedroom was huge, with a king-sized bed, direct access to the main balcony and a spacious en-suite.

Our master bedroom

The master en-suite

The en-suite vanity has two basins. The shower is oversized, strong and hot. It also features a deep spa bath tub with a glass window overlooking the master bedroom, and then on, out to the balcony and view beyond.

The master ensuite bath has a window looking into the master bedroom

The second bedroom has two single beds and even has its own sea-view balcony. You can to drift off to sleep each night whilst watching the rolling waves of the Surfers Paradise beach far below.

The Soul second bedroom

Both bedrooms feature comfortable beds with pristine linen, flat-screen televisions, plenty of wardrobe space and heavy curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows.

A smaller, second bathroom services the second bedroom.

The second bathroom services the second bedroom and apartment

The kitchen

Soul apartment kitchen

The kitchen has plenty of space, and is fully optioned for a three-course dinner, or simply serving up the kid’s morning breakfasts at the kitchen bar or dining table.

There’s a large corner pantry to hold your groceries, a large fridge with ice water dispenser, full sized oven with cook-top plus a microwave. There’s a super-quiet dishwasher, and the usual hot water kettle jug, toaster, crockery, pots and pans and cutlery.

A laundry nook

A quiet front-loader washing machine and separate dryer reside in their own little alcove opposite the kitchen area. A storage cupboard holds cleaning products and an iron. There is also a washing basket, ironing board and airer/drying rack.

But a video is worth a thousand words – here is our Soul 2 bedroom apartment walk-through video.

The balconies and view

A beautiful view greets you each morning

As expected, Soul offers amazing, expansive views of the ocean and Gold Coast for miles in multiple directions.

Ocean views as far as the eye can see

Our apartment was on the 30th floor, and featured two balconies – the small one off the second bedroom, and one huge main balcony, which extended along the lounge and main bedroom. The large table and chairs are perfect for al-fresco dining, and there’s a long lounge chair to snooze or read a book on.

Of course with those breathtaking views overlooking Surfers Paradise Beach all the way up and down the Gold Coast, the balcony is the perfect place for sighting whales during whale-watching season.

The balcony is large, and runs along the length of two rooms inside

The only way to effectively show you the scope of the balcony view, is by video, so take a look for yourself…

Spending time out on the balcony just watching everything that goes on is lots of fun – the pool, beach strip and night-markets, beach-goers, surfers, shoppers – the passing parade of news helicopters, joy-flights, blimps and birds – there is always something going on in Surfers Paradise. Take a pair of binoculars, or a good zoom camera and you’ve got entertainment for hours!

Here are just a few of the fascinating things we saw from our 30th floor Soul balcony – click on the image to enlarge it.

Soul complex facilities

The Soul hotel / apartments complex offers two swimming pools.

There is a good-sized outdoor pool located on the second floor level, with direct views over to the beach and esplanade, making it a great place to spend a lot of time relaxing on one of the luxury pool lounges.

The outdoor pool is heated just enough to take the chill off. The outdoor spa is hot, however, and there’s two shallow luke-warm baby pools.

The Soul hotel outdoor baby pools adjoin the spa

During winter (excepting school holidays and weekends),both the outdoor and indoor pools seem to be barely used by guests. Often, we had the entire pool area to ourselves for hours!

The outdoor pool area is mult-level, with a spa at the top

You can also access the pool level directly from the street level using a lift in the Soul boardwalk arcade, which means you can pop down to grab some lunch or ice creams, or swim in the surf and then go straight up to the pool without having to walk back through the hotel lobby. There are landscaped barbeque gardens on this level too.

The outdoor pool deck overlooks Surfers Paradise beach

Inside, there is a large indoor pool – again, just slightly heated. There are also two indoor spas – one small, one very large. A steam room and a sauna are located off the spas. There’s also a large sundeck with plenty of lounges located off the indoor pool.

Soul apartments indoor heated pool

The indoor spas

There’s is a small but well outfitted gym spread over two small rooms, located near the pools. The gym rooms have TVs to watch whilst you exercise.

The Soul gym is spread over two rooms

Take a video walk through the the pools area and gym here…

Soul’s onsite restaurant is “Seaduction”, which has views over to the beach. The price range is average to high.

Free parking is onsite in the carpark under the complex. Considering the location of Soul, you can count on an extra five to ten minutes just to get in and out of the city and onto the Gold Coast Highway – but at least you get a rock-star drive though the centre of Surfers each time you go out!

Dining in or out

Although Soul apartments are perfect for self catering, it’s no fun for mum or dad if the family eats in all the time! After all, you didn’t come on holidays to cook and wash up!

There is a row of great cafe-restaurants right outside Soul

Located right outside the entrance to Soul Apartments is a row of good quality cafes and restaurants overlooking the beach (my review of these restaurants is on the way!). Don’t holiday at Soul without sampling at least a couple of these eateries.

In the Soul Boardwalk arcade beside the Soul tower you’ll find a Hogs Breath Café and Pancake Parlour, or if you’re craving fast-food, a McDonalds and KFC are also on the Esplanade strip.

For a quick bite, there is every kind of take-away food bars up and down Cavill Mall. Grab a bench and soak up some atmosphere tucking into your slice of pizza, kebab or hot dog, listening to the buskers play!

How to book a discounted Soul Apartment

Instead of using the regular route to book in at Soul, we used a unit rental company – and there are a few of them. You can find them by Googling, and some you can find as Airbnb type rentals, Stayz and other common holiday booking websites. Booking this way can get you significant discounts, particularly in the winter months.

The Soul building is partially run as Peppers Soul Resort. The remainder of apartments are privately owned. Some owners live on site, and others choose to rent out their apartment using a real estate manager.

Using a private management company, as opposed to booking through Peppers, can reduce your accommodation costs significantly – particularly if you are staying for a few days.

In order to save that money, there are some small inconveniences.

Sometimes you will need to pick your keys up at the rental agency, instead of Soul – so you may need to drive out of your way a kilometre or two.

At the end of the rental, you leave the apartment keys locked inside the apartment.

If you have a hire car, you will need to move the car out of the car park and leave it at the entrance whilst you go back up the lift to leave the keys in the apartment, as normal receptionist assistance does not apply when privately renting.

Soul Peppers Reception desk

Hotel reception is there to service Pepper’s guests alone. If you lose your key or have any problems, the people to contact are the rental agency, not reception, so there is a call-out fee. That said, we had one small maintenance issue which was immediately attended to – no problem at all. During our stay we had access to all hotel facilities as per normal – we felt no different to any other Soul guest – but we had paid a greatly-reduced price.

 Soul useful info

Rating: Five-stars
Address: 8 Esplanade, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217

Getting there

From the Gold Coast (Coolangatta) airport – approximately 30 mins drive
From Brisbane Airport – approximately 1 hour’s drive
5 minutes walk from the Cavill Avenue tram station
Free parking in the underground car park

Gold Coast Luxury Resorts booking agents

*All prices are correct as at September 2016

This review is an independent, non-sponsored Australian hotel blog review. All opinions are my own.

Have you ever visited the Gold Coast on a family holiday? What did you enjoy doing there? Tell us in the comments below…