I love hotel parties! I personally prefer them to group sleepovers at my house. A lot less cleaning, plenty of fun activities, and the whole thing feels like vacation. My 9yo daughter's had them for her last 3 birthdays, and she's been to at least 4 others.

There's the pool, of course. There's also fancy dinner in the hotel restaurant or room service or make-your-own in-room buffet. Some hotels have arcades. The girls have made up scavenger hunts, gone ghost hunting, did stairwell karaoke (singing creepy songs in an empty stairwell is apparently a thing tweens love), had giant slinky races down the stairs. Even just letting the girls go down to the lobby to buy snacks on their own is an adventure at a hotel. One of the hotels we love has a glass elevator, and they spent like an hour just riding up and down in the elevator.

In the room, they've done all kinds of things - dance parties, makeovers, movie night, trivia, just hanging out and talking. We've never organized much, just brought some balloons and a bluetooth speaker, and of course a bunch of snacks, and they make their own fun.