Santa Monica’s seven best new and renovated hotels in 2023

The Georgian, a striking art deco landmark on Santa Monica’s Ocean Avenue, is both an icon and a mystery. Most anyone who’s driven the famed boulevard lining the Pacific Coast west of Los Angeles will have noticed its vibrant seafoam façade and cheerful yellow trim, but few stepped inside.

Opened in the 1930s as a sexy bolthole for Hollywood’s brightest stars (think Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe), the building had lost its luster: after decades as a private hotel, it was turned into a nursing home.

Cut to the present, and the city’s grande dame has emerged from years of disrepair. In its 84 rooms, gilded minibars come with Champagne call buttons; in suites, you can lounge on a baby pink sofa while wearing a royal blue bathrobe with yellow piping that echoes the hotel’s façade.

In July, the Georgian Room, a speakeasy-turned-entertainment venue in the hotel’s basement in which Carole Lombard and Dick van Dyke were regular performers, reopened after 60 dormant years. It serves $250 (€238) tomahawk steaks and stiff drinks to glammed-up guests who are personally escorted through its “secret” side door.

It’s not just the most talked-about opening in Santa Monica’s recent history, it’s one of the clearest signs of the destination’s recent revival.

In the past several years, Santa Monica’s legendary beachfront drag went from being one of LA’s most glamorous outer enclaves to one of its stalest – eclipsed by buzzes through so much of LA’s greater metropolitan area. Now the neighbourhood is claiming a new sophisticated identity.

The reopening of the Georgian after its two-year renovation is the first in a burst of big-deal openings; its bookend comes in the even more keenly anticipated opening of the Regent Hotel Santa Monica later this year.

The two debuts have so vastly raised expectations for the area that news of their impending arrivals catalysed a wave of much-needed hotel renovations up and down Ocean Avenue.

“I would drive by it all the time and think, ‘One day, I’ll turn it into something,’” says Jon Blanchard, the new proprietor of the Georgian and co-founder of BLVD Hospitality, whose portfolio of hotels also includes the Los Angeles outposts of Ace and Soho House.

Santa Monica, he says, “is one of those quintessential places that really holds tight to what makes it so,” referring to the city’s penchant for preservation and the notoriously strict permitting rules that come with it. Yet, he adds: “It was in desperate need of new blood.”

The Georgian brought that. Now, several others are on the move.

A few blocks away, Viceroy Santa Monica unveiled its own makeover in April. The hotel played a major role in making Ocean Avenue the hippest destination in the early 2000s, with its glossy black-white-and-yellow interiors by consummate cool-girl designer Kelly Wearstler.

This year’s $21 million (€20 million) renovation has returned the 162-room hotel to Earth with a breezy aesthetic better attuned to the Southern California lifestyle with mid-century modern furnishings, neutral colours, and a contemporary art collection that’s heavy on surfing iconography.

On a recent tour of the hotel’s new spaces, the subtext was clear: While Wearstler’s aesthetic was groundbreaking at the time, it had become dated; today’s hotels increasingly aim to better reflect their environment and community.

Two blocks north, the Pierside has given new life to an old Holiday Inn across the street from the Santa Monica Pier. Only so much luxury can be infused into the footprint of a budget inn, yet the 132-room hotel has managed to elevate the property in all the right ways: Rooms are bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows and crisp coastal design; the Surfing Fox restaurant serves a creative combination of Mexican and Japanese dishes reflecting Executive Chef David Yamaguchi’s family heritage; and the lobby’s lending library serves as a brilliant addition, offering everything from ukuleles and portable Victrolas to sandcastle kits and PlayStations.

The Santa Monica buzz has even reached hotelier and LA tastemaker Jeff Klein, whose ultra-exclusive members club, San Vicente Bungalows, will open a second location next door to the Georgian next spring.

According to Klein, the neighbourhood has long been underserved. “The west side has been limited when it comes to an elevated hospitality experience,” he says, adding that San Vicente Santa Monica, as the project will be known, will offer the rare combination of sophisticated urban vibes and “million-dollar ocean views.”

Perhaps the biggest news to hit Ocean Avenue is the impending arrival of luxury heavyweight Regent Hotels & Resorts, which has been renovating the old Loews – one of the only hotels on the beach side of the street – since March. (All other hotels in the area, except Shutters on the Beach and Hotel Casa Del Mar, stand across Ocean.) The glamorous takeover will bring Santa Monica relatively larger guest rooms and such needed amenities as a luxury spa and a beach-front swimming pool.

It’s significant that London-based Regent – which has expanded rapidly since publicly traded IHG Hotels & Resorts obtained a majority stake in the brand in 2018 – chose Santa Monica for its first U.S. opening. (Regent is best known for five-star properties in Asia.)

“Santa Monica is the perfect place to start [Regent’s expansion],” says Tom Rowntree, IHG’s vice president of global luxury & lifestyle brands. “It has the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the energy and modernity of LA, and the coastal life that is inherent to Santa Monica itself – and we’re engaging all of that.”

One could argue that the new Regent, which aims to open late this year, isn’t merely a part of Santa Monica’s upward momentum; to some extent, it’s driving it. More than a few hotel personnel hint that the uber luxury brand’s impending arrival was a factor in decisions to renovate and reprogramme.

Even beloved properties in good condition have made updates: The aforementioned Shutters on the Beach, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, recently renovated its Courtyard Lounge and added fresh programming such as a new brunch series in partnership with Champagne Perrier-Jouët to drum up attention.

This is a tidal shift that’s changing the entire Santa Monica experience, says Klein – for tourists and locals alike. “There are so many interesting, sophisticated people who live on the west side, and they have been lacking something unique in their backyard,” he says. “Now they are getting it.”