The best hotels in Los Angeles

Los Angeles defies the hotel search logic that works in smaller cities. In a place that covers more than 5,000 square miles and encompasses distinct environments — beach towns, dense urban neighborhoods, hillside canyons, and sprawling suburbs — location is not just a preference but a practical question with real consequences for how a stay unfolds. A hotel in Santa Monica and one in Beverly Hills are roughly 30 minutes apart on paper, but can take an hour or more in traffic, making the difference between a convenient base and a frustrating one. The neighborhoods represented in the best hotels list reflect that geographic spread: Santa Monica and Malibu for beach access, Beverly Hills and Bel Air for the classic luxury corridor, Century City and downtown for proximity to business and cultural venues, and West Hollywood for the Sunset Strip.

The hotels here emerged through editorial evaluation, reader feedback from Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards, and the perspective of a writer who has lived in Los Angeles for more than 40 years. They range from beachfront bungalows in Malibu to all-suite towers above downtown, and from a 1912 property that has hosted Hollywood royalty across more than a century to a boutique hotel that opened its first U.S. location in the mid-2020s.

These 10 hotels come from Travel + Leisure’s list of the best hotels in Los Angeles, which extends to properties in West Hollywood, the Santa Monica Proper, Shutters on the Beach, and the Oceana Santa Monica, all of which bring the full list to 15 properties that cover the broad geographic and experiential spread of the metropolitan area and its distinct hotel neighborhoods from beach to canyon to downtown.

Credit: Hotel Bel-Air

Hotel Bel-Air sits on 12 acres in the hills and canyons of the Bel Air neighborhood, a setting that Fora Travel advisor Leila Najafi describes as an urban oasis. The grounds include a sculpture garden where resident swans are a recurring feature of the morning landscape. Najafi specifically names walking among the sculptures and looking for the swans as her favorite thing to do on a stay. The property is a frequent traveler favorite in Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards, appearing in the 2025 edition, which reflects the level of sustained guest satisfaction that the property generates year over year.

The Restaurant at Hotel Bel-Air offers indoor and outdoor seating in a setting the source’s author describes as a special-occasion go-to, with a relaxed atmosphere that does not sacrifice elegance. For shorter visits, the bar offers California cuisine in small-plate format alongside cocktails, allowing guests to experience the property without committing to a full dining reservation. Complimentary house car service and turndown service are among the standout amenities.

The canyon setting, the landscaped grounds, and the service level together make Hotel Bel-Air something distinct from the standard luxury hotel offering in Los Angeles. The city has no shortage of hotels with excellent amenities. The Bel-Air’s specific appeal lies in the feeling of being genuinely away from the urban environment while remaining within the city, a quality that few properties in Los Angeles can match. The 12 lush acres include gardens, a swan habitat, and the kind of mature tree canopy that only decades of sustained horticultural investment can produce, giving the grounds a depth that newly constructed luxury hotels cannot replicate,, regardless of their renovation budget. The sculpture garden, specifically, and the morning ritual of walking it that Najafi describes, are amenities that money cannot fast-track: they require time, sustained landscape investment, and the specific wildlife that both enable.

Credit: Dorchester Collection

The Beverly Hills Hotel, known as the Pink Palace for its distinctive color, opened in 1912 and has operated for more than a century as a favorite destination of both Hollywood royalty and actual royalty. The 12 landscaped acres at its center include the hotel’s most photographed feature: the outdoor pool, surrounded by palm trees and pink cabanas, which has appeared in enough cultural contexts to function as a visual shorthand for a specific era of California luxury.

The bungalows are the property’s most distinctive accommodation option. Each carries a celebrity theme and name, with the design reflecting the personality or aesthetic associated with that name. The Frank Sinatra bungalow evokes midcentury Palm Springs decor, while the Marilyn Monroe bungalow executes an all-pink interior. The result is a set of accommodations with a specific, coherent design concept, not a generic luxury aesthetic, that gives repeat visitors a reason to experience different bungalows across multiple stays.

The Polo Lounge has maintained its reputation across the hotel’s lifespan as a gathering point for Hollywood executives who use it for power lunches. The on-site dining options extend beyond the Polo Lounge to several other restaurants, and the full-service spa and hair salon complete a property built to function as a self-contained world for guests who prefer to stay put within its 12 acres. The property’s longevity since 1912 means it has accumulated a guest history that includes some of the 20th century's most significant cultural figures, giving a stay there a distinct cultural weight that newer Beverly Hills properties lack. The Polo Lounge has been a scene of Hollywood deal-making long enough that its walls carry an implicit institutional memory accumulated over more than a century. The restaurant’s banana leaf wallpaper has become as iconic as any design element in Beverly Hills hospitality, and it has appeared in enough film and television productions that international visitors arrive already familiar with it before they check in.

Credit: Four Seasons

The Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel, has operated at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive since 1928 and appeared in Travel + Leisure’s 2025 World’s Best Awards. It's 395 rooms are spread across two towers, with accommodations that range from a 600-square-foot studio suite to a series of progressively larger, more elaborately appointed options. The peak of that range is the Veranda Suite, which adds a rooftop glamping tent, a fire pit, gold-encrusted s’mores, and views that take in Rodeo Drive and the Hollywood Hills simultaneously.

The 1928 opening date places The Beverly Wilshire firmly in the history of Beverly Hills luxury hospitality, predating the neighborhood’s postwar rise as the international emblem of Southern California wealth. That longevity gives the property a guest history dense enough to support stories that newer competitors cannot claim. The location at the foot of Rodeo Drive is both practically convenient — guests can walk directly into Beverly Hills’ most famous shopping street — and symbolically central to the neighborhood’s identity.

The Mediterranean-style outdoor pool, two restaurants, and lounges, and overnight valet parking are among the standout amenities. The overnight valet, in particular, reflects Los Angeles reality: car storage is as much a hospitality consideration as room quality, and The Beverly Wilshire addresses it with the infrastructure that the city’s parking constraints make necessary for luxury guests. The Beverly Wilshire’s location at the intersection of Wilshire and Rodeo Drive also means that guests can walk into Beverly Hills’ primary retail and cultural landscape without getting in a car, which in Los Angeles is a practical advantage of the first order. For visitors whose Los Angeles itinerary prioritizes Rodeo Drive shopping, the Beverly Hills garden network, or the Erewhon market that has become a cultural landmark in its own right, the Beverly Wilshire’s position puts all three within a short walk.

Credit: L'Ermitage Beverly Hills

L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills is an all-suite hotel with 116 rooms that was named to Travel + Leisure’s 2025 World’s Best Awards. Its positioning is quieter and more discreet than that of the nearby landmark Beverly Hills properties, offering what the source describes as quiet elegance, impeccable service, and low-key charm. Several suites include full kitchens and separate entrances designed specifically for private chef access, which reflects a guest profile that prefers cooking and in-suite dining to restaurant reservations.

The Palm Suite represents one accommodation tier within the property: it includes a baby grand piano, a fireplace, a dining room large enough for 10 guests, and multiple balconies. But the property’s largest and most elaborate option is the L’Ermitage Suite itself, which measures 3,700 square feet and includes a private theater, a dedicated spa treatment room, a full kitchen, and sweeping views of the city below.

The private theater and spa treatment room within a single hotel suite reflect a specific approach to luxury accommodation: replicating the amenities that would normally require moving through a hotel’s common areas within the suite. For guests who value privacy above public amenity access — and L’Ermitage’s guest profile suggests many do — the ability to screen films or receive spa treatments without leaving the room is genuinely functional, not simply extravagant. The rooftop pool and pet-friendly policy add practical appeal to the property. The all-suite format across 116 rooms means that every guest at L’Ermitage is in a suite, not a standard room, which sets the baseline accommodation level higher than at most Beverly Hills competitors. The low-key positioning the source describes reflects a deliberate choice to attract guests who want exceptional service without the celebrity-watching atmosphere of the nearby, more famous properties. For extended stays, the suites with private chef entrances and full kitchens allow L’Ermitage guests to manage their own dining on a schedule that neither room service nor restaurant reservations could match.

Credit: Fairmont Century Plaza

Fairmont Century Plaza in Century City completed a 2021 renovation that added 400 guest rooms and suites, each with a private balcony. The balcony-for-every-room standard reflects both the California climate’s outdoor-living culture and a deliberate design decision to make the outdoor connection available to the entire hotel, not reserved for premium tiers only. The rooftop swimming pool and bar occupy the highest point of the property.

The Fairmont Gold hotel-within-a-hotel concept provides a subset of guests with additional layers of service: a private entrance, a personal assistant, complimentary shoeshine, and a dedicated lounge serving breakfast, snacks, and evening canapés. The layered service model allows the property to serve guests with different service expectations within a single building without homogenizing the experience.

The 14,000-square-foot spa is a significant amenity. It includes a Himalayan salt room, an aromatherapy steam room, and multiple relaxation rooms, which give it genuine depth as a wellness destination, not a basic hotel spa. The Century City location, adjacent to Westfield Century City and within distance of Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills, places the property in a commercially and culturally active part of the city that is underserved by comparable luxury accommodations. Century City’s position between Beverly Hills and the west side of Los Angeles gives it access to both Beverly Hills's cultural infrastructure and Pacific Coast destinations to the west, making it a strategically versatile base for visitors whose itineraries span multiple parts of the city. The Westfield Century City shopping center, directly adjacent to the hotel, is itself a destination-quality retail environment that draws its own visitors independent of the hotel. The fitness center and the rooftop pool at Century Plaza also serve guests who want active amenities alongside the spa experience, giving the property a comprehensive wellness infrastructure across multiple formats from spa to pool to fitness studio, making Century Plaza one of the most comprehensively equipped wellness hotels on the west side.

Credit: Hilton

Conrad Los Angeles is part of The Grand L.A., a mixed-use development in downtown that also includes residential and retail components, all within a building designed by architect Frank Gehry. The hotel’s 305 rooms include a range from well-appointed single-bed guest rooms up to a 1,267-square-foot corner Skyline Penthouse Presidential Suite on the 18th floor with downtown views across multiple horizons.

Interior designer Tara Bernerd describes the design intent as wanting the property to spill into the outdoors, which the rooftop terrace and heated infinity pool bring to life. The atmosphere the source author characterizes as refined and approachable reflects the specific balance Bernerd achieved: a luxury hotel that does not convey the formal stiffness that luxury hotels can project when the design emphasizes exclusivity over comfort.

The downtown location places Conrad guests near The Broad contemporary art museum, Grand Central Market, and Dodger Stadium, providing cultural, culinary, and sports access that beach and hillside hotels cannot match. For visitors whose Los Angeles itinerary centers on the city’s cultural venues rather than its beaches, the downtown location is a practical advantage that the other addresses on this list cannot offer. The broader Grand L.A. development, of which Conrad is a part, brings Frank Gehry's architectural identity to a downtown block, giving the hotel a physical context — the building’s curves and sculptural gestures visible from the lobby and the street — that standard commercial tower hotels in the same neighborhood do not. Guests who want to engage with the broader development can access the retail and public spaces that surround the hotel’s entrance. The downtown Los Angeles location also gives Conrad guests proximity to the culinary variety of Grand Central Market, which houses multiple vendors across a range of cuisines in a single historic space with no equivalent among the hotel’s westside or beachside competitors for variety and price range in a single room.

Credit: IHG Hotels & Resorts

The Intercontinental Los Angeles Downtown pays sustained attention to its location in a way that the source author, who has made three stays and several dinner visits, specifically notices. A light fixture over the registration area takes its twisting red-and-yellow form from the visual language of Los Angeles freeways. A neon installation near the bar encodes a poem that helps visitors remember the order of downtown Los Angeles streets. The guest rooms feature photographs of the beach, the Hollywood Sign, and the Santa Monica Mountains, giving each a curated connection to the landscape surrounding the tower.

The seventh floor hosts the pool and hot tub, surrounded by cabanas and serviced by the No Dive Bar. A fitness center, sauna, and steam room complete the on-site wellness amenities. The hotel’s proximity to the Grammy Museum, Crypto.com Arena, and Pershing Square $SQ places it in the downtown entertainment district, making it a natural choice for visitors attending events at these venues who want to minimize travel time.

The thematic coherence of the Los Angeles-specific design elements is worth noting as a distinguishing quality. Many hotels in Los Angeles use the city’s imagery in generic ways. The Intercontinental Downtown’s approach — specific freeways, specific streets, specific landmarks — gives the design a precision that rewards attention and gives repeat visitors something to read and interpret across multiple stays. Downtown Los Angeles has transformed significantly over the past decade, and the Intercontinental sits at the heart of that transformation: the Grammy Museum, Crypto.com Arena, and the revitalized Grand Central Market reflect the cultural investment that has made the downtown neighborhood more animated than it was for much of the late 20th century. The hotel’s design decision to embed that local geography directly into its lobby art and room imagery gives it a site-specificity that distinguishes it from the many Los Angeles hotels that could be relocated to any city without losing their identity.

Credit: Malibu Beach Inn

Malibu Beach Inn is a 47-room boutique property situated directly on Carbon Beach in Malibu, the stretch informally known as Billionaire’s Beach because of the density of high-profile private homes that line it. The 47 rooms are spread across three floors, with the largest option being a 600-square-foot one-bedroom suite featuring a Juliette balcony off the bedroom and a full private balcony adjoining the living room. All rooms have ocean-facing balconies, so the sound and sight of the Pacific are a constant presence, regardless of room size.

A private stairway leads directly from the hotel to the beach, giving guests access to a stretch of Malibu coastline that is otherwise effectively inaccessible to casual visitors. Carbon Beach commands a coastal quality — the water, the sand, and the absence of crowd pressure — that public beach access points in Malibu do not provide. The Carbon Beach Club on the property handles dining, and in-room breakfast, lunch, and dinner are available for guests who prefer to eat without leaving the balcony view.

The boutique scale of 47 rooms gives Malibu Beach Inn a level of service intimacy that larger resort properties cannot replicate. The 24-hour front desk, in-room dining, and full-service spa and in-room treatment options make it a self-contained retreat for guests who come to Malibu specifically for the ocean and the privacy the setting provides. The boutique scale and the specific Billionaire’s Beach address give Malibu Beach Inn a narrowly defined appeal that is either exactly what a visitor is looking for or entirely beside the point: for guests who want the most direct possible connection to a specific stretch of Malibu coast, no other property provides it at comparable quality and privacy. The boutique scale also means the hotel’s service staff can develop genuine knowledge of repeat guests across stays, which is a form of hospitality infrastructure that large resort properties structurally cannot provide.

Credit: Fairmont

Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows in Santa Monica traces its origins to a private estate built in 1921, and its current form reflects the accumulated investment of a century of hospitality use. The property occupies five landscaped acres on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a position that gives it the visual authority over the beach and water that ground-level beach hotels cannot match from elevation. It appeared in Travel + Leisure’s 2025 World’s Best Awards as a reader favorite.

The bungalow accommodations are a specific draw. Bungalow One, the largest at 2,500 square feet, has three bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a private furnished patio, and operates at a scale closer to a furnished house than a hotel room. The main building comprises 176 Ocean Tower rooms and 90 Palisades rooms, contributing to a property total that gives the hotel significant accommodation depth.

The pool programming is distinctive: during summer, family-friendly films play on Saturday and some Sundays, with popcorn, food, and drinks from Fig Restaurant available poolside. The bluff-top estate setting, the bungalow accommodations, and the poolside cinema together create a property where the atmosphere is social and animated, not purely restful. Five restaurants and bars, a full-service spa, and a fitness studio round out the amenity profile. The 1921 estate origin gives Fairmont Miramar a provenance among Santa Monica’s luxury hotels that the newer properties lack, and the bluff-top position — above the Pacific Coast Highway, not below it — gives the ocean views a height and sweep that ground-level beach hotels cannot match. The property’s location at the northern end of Santa Monica also makes it convenient to both the pier and the start of the PCH heading north toward Malibu and the network of coastal destinations that the highway connects along the Southern California coast for visitors who want to extend a Santa Monica stay into a Malibu or Santa Barbara day trip.

Credit: Hotel Casa del Mar

Hotel Casa del Mar is a beachfront hotel in Santa Monica that announces itself through its entrance: twin staircases with wrought iron railings rise to meet a glittering chandelier, establishing a formal introduction to a property built around the visual drama of its Pacific setting. The 129 guest rooms and 16 suites include multi-bedroom ocean-view options and three two-story Penthouse Suites that maximize the vertical relationship with the water.

Italian marble bathrooms and whirlpool tubs anchor the in-room experience at a level of material quality that the exterior grandeur promises. Three on-site restaurants offer dining options, with Patio del Mar offering al fresco dining directly adjacent to the sand, placing the meal in the most direct possible relationship with the beach. The full-service spa and pool with cabanas complete the resort's amenity profile.

The source author notes the property delivers entertainment and beautiful views day and night, which speaks to a quality that not all beachfront hotels in Santa Monica achieve: the nighttime view and the evening atmosphere are as compelling as the daytime beach access. For guests who prioritize beachfront location, classic formal architecture, and dining directly on the sand, Hotel Casa del Mar offers all three on the same property. The Patio del Mar restaurant, which places diners on an outdoor terrace just off the sand, effectively extends the beach into the dining experience in a way that indoor restaurants with ocean views do not. The twin staircases at the entrance have become a visual trademark that gives the hotel a specific architectural identity on the Santa Monica beachfront. The property’s collection of three on-site restaurants also gives guests a dining range that supports multi-day stays without requiring departure from the hotel’s campus, which is practical for visitors who want to maximize their time on or near the Santa Monica beach between the pier and the path.