Palm Springs hotels

Korakia Pensione has the kind of low-key exotic glam that makes it feel like a private hideaway you found yourself. In fact, it sits on two sides of one small street in the Historic Tennis Club neighborhood. On one side, you’ll enter a Moroccan villa, complete with a dramatic keyhole-shaped door, built in the 1920s by painter Gordon Coutts.
On the other, a Mediterranean mini compound once owned by silent screen star J. Carrol Nash that includes a historic adobe cottage with a private courtyard and its own citrus grove. You’ll eat breakfast (included) in the courtyard on the Moroccan side under the shade of orange trees by a bubbling fountain.
And at night, the staff light more than 100 candles that illuminate the olive, date, and palm trees. The revivified villas feel just as they must have when their owners entertained intellectuals, movie stars, and artists nearly a century ago.

Architect Herbert W. Burns designed this 1950s gem around its pool – a popular convention of mid-century modern architecture. It’s perfectly situated in the Historic Tennis Club neighborhood, just a few minutes’ walk from Downtown Palm Springs.
Now rendered in lively cobalt and white since its redesign, Holiday House is an exercise in snappy colors and crisp lines. This is a zippy hotel with a sense of humor (I once stayed in a room whose amenities basket included a very funny book whose title I probably shouldn’t put in print).
Take the complimentary polka-dotted bikes (blue and white, of course) for a ride, walk downtown or up into the hills, or simply lounge around one of the most picturesque pools in Palm Springs. Keep in mind that Holiday House, like most hotels in Palm Springs, favors dogs over kids.

An early ad for Villa Royale showed sunbathers relaxing around a pool cluster of 38 Spanish Mission Revival bungalows around a big pool and invited guests to “play in the sun” in beautifully appointed rooms with “telephone switchboard service, lanai lounge and recreation room, heated swimming pool…and shuffleboard.”
It was signed “Your hostess, Mrs. Evelyn Pell.” One of the first hotels to open in South Palm Springs in 1947, Villa Royale became a hideaway for high profile Hollywood fun seekers and has retained its gracious hosting spirit for nearly eight decades.
Reopened in 2018 after a refurbishment, its owners have kept its original classic bones – mahogany woodwork, terracotta floors, exposed beam ceilings – and added colorful graphic Portuguese and Spanish tiles and 50 commissioned pieces of artwork that lend some Hollywood glam to your stay. Don’t miss the restaurant and bar Del Rey, with its oak and marble bar and an outdoor firepit.

A tired former mid-century motor inn transformed into a collection of 21 casitas and guest rooms, Fleur Noire is a design departure from Palm Springs’ mid-mod style, and one of the most unique hotels in Palm Springs. Its bungalows, painted in black, are illuminated with massively scaled floral murals.
The layout of the original 1940s Burket’s Trade Winds Hotel remains the same, with a pool at its center, but the landscape is now filled with native desert plants. The reimaging of this property is smart: white beamed ceilings and terracotta floors remain – a nod to their origins.
The hotel is perfect for casual lounging by the outdoor fire pits at night. And look for the tiny speakeasy rosé bar, La Boisson, behind pink doors. You can even text in your order so you don’t have to move from your poolside station for your rosé-all-day experience.

Imagine a lifeless, sand-colored condo timeshare building. Now imagine it made over by designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard into an ornate pink and white Moroccan kasbah, and you’ll have Sands Hotel & Spa in the affluent, tennis-loving resort community of Indian Wells, southeast of Palm Springs.
The Sands does nod to the area’s roots with guest rooms done in mid-century furniture and pops of bright colors, and custom minibar cabinets stocked with crystal stemware. But it’s the Moroccan lobby, decked out in Bullard’s custom-designed black-and-white tile, coupled with a spa that shimmers with zellige-tiled walls and cushioned nooks tucked under theatrical archways that make this resort transformative.
The hotel’s restaurant, the Pink Cabana, is (obviously) very pink, with palm tree wallpaper and lined with vintage fashion shots – a throwback to midcentury tennis clubs. It’s a tough reservation to secure, especially during the BNP Paribas Open, so call early.

ARRIVE Palm Springs, in the Uptown Design District, is a rare new-build hotel in a city that is still artfully refurbishing derelict gems. Opened in 2016, it sticks with the classic Palm Springs plan: a central, 42-foot-long pool surrounded by 32 guestrooms.
It sits on the northern edge of the neighborhood, which is expanding with more hotels, and mid-century and contemporary interiors stores. ARRIVE is perfectly at home in this environment, rendered in rusted steel and wood planks, with great views of the San Jacinto Mountains.
While some guest rooms in Palm Springs sacrifice luxury for great style, ARRIVE furnishes its rooms with Bellino linens, automatic shades, and Apple TVs. Some have private patios and design-centric Modfire fireplaces – perfect for a little lounging at the end of the day.

This is the hotel for those who like to be right in the center of the action and within walking distance to downtown’s restaurants – and also best for those who don’t necessarily love a creative refurbishment. The hotel itself is sleek and contemporary, with references to its surroundings in low-slung mid-century-inspired furniture.
My favorite rooms are the mountain view rooms, with their floor-to-ceiling glass and bird’s-eye views into the mountains. The best way to experience the Rowan is to take a rooftop cabana and sip cocktails by the pool – taking a break to dine at the rooftop 4 Saint restaurant, with its innovative Latin-influenced Southern food.
While most hotels are delighted to accept your well-behaved dog, the Rowan celebrates them, with welcome treats and other perks.

The Ace Hotel and Swim Club is one of Palm Springs’ favorite playpens for beautiful people. Originally the 1965 Westward Ho Hotel, it is one of the snappiest redesigns of an older hotel.
Anyone who remembers a 1970s-era motor lodge layout can appreciate this update, which retains all the best things about that time – including a diner that will remind you of the Denny’s of your youth (or your parents’ youth), all the way down to the thick brown coffee mugs, flagstone walls, and pleather booths. That’s because that’s what it is, brought back to its former glory.
One of the best hotels in Palm Springs for those who want plenty of programming, like Monday night bingo, sunset yoga, and open mic night at the Amigo Room hideaway bar. Rooms here aren’t the most luxurious or hi-tech, but that’s not what you’re here for.

One of the most storied places in Palm Springs, the Colony Palms was first opened by a mobster in the 1930s, became a Hollywood hideout, and in the early 2000s, received a maximalist retro overhaul courtesy of designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard.
Now in the hands of architect Steve Hermann, it is reaching new luxury heights, with design references from stylized 1940s-era French and Italian Rivieras. The 41 rooms, 14 bungalows, and 2 grand suites are stocked with the utmost in luxury trappings, from Frette linens and robes to Le Labo soaps and in-room Nespresso machines.
Most have one wall of vintage or hand painted wallpaper that anchors the room (my favorite are the white cranes in flight in the deluxe king rooms). And the place is absolutely tailor-made for quiet lounging around the 70-foot saltwater mosaic pool.

Designed by Desert Modernist William F. Cody for Hollywood producer Jack Wrather to entertain a rotating cast of characters and stars, L’Horizon is a compound of 25 bungalows in Cody’s trademark elegantly austere style and one of the luxury hotels in Palm Springs. Walk out to the 85-foot infinity pool for lazy days in some of the most stylish surrounds in Palm Springs.
Like Hermann’s other places, every inch has been carefully considered, from white plank flooring and Italian furniture to Frette sheets and robes. The bungalows are both open, with clerestory windows on which the exposed beam ceilings seem to float and Italian glass doors opening into a spare and beautiful desert landscape, but also incredibly private.
This is not a place to come with the kids (in fact, they’re not allowed), but to spend a sexy weekend with your significant other.