Hotel Bel-Air
Los Angeles Luxury Hotel

Detailed Review

Hotel Bel-Air, a member of Leading Small Hotels of the World, has been a favored hideaway of discriminating travelers offering a rich history that extends for over 50 years. Our hotel comprises 91 individually unique rooms and suites, nestled on 11.5 acres in the desirable Bel-Air estates of Los Angeles. The Hotel gardens and Swan Lake blend with our accommodations to create the charm of Hotel Bel-Air. Visit with us in beautiful Bel-Air to understand why business and leisure guests from around the world for decades have turned to us as their private retreat.

Press Quotes

"Set on 12 acres of gardens, courtyards, and fountains, the hotel and its "well-manicured grounds" provide a serene base.” Conde Nast Traveller 07



" There is a touch of the faux-English country house about the Bel-Air with its racing green leather and dark wood bar, stacked cream teas by the fire and antique-style decor...where staff are so attentive every guest is made to feel like a visiting dignitary.” Independent 06

Independent Reviews

Hotel Bel Air
By Stuart Wolfendale

Six times I’ve been to the Hotel Bel-Air and still I drove right past. The five-hectare property is so recessed in its own foliage; there’s barely anything to see of it from the road. A sign you might wonder? Dear heaven, no - nothing so coarse in this elite neighbourhood where the private residences are as large and reclusive as the hotel. There is just a quiet plaque embedded in the stone wall of a forecourt where the valet took my car and hid it from the limos. The Bel-Air is a retreat for the aristocracy of Los Angeles and its movie business. Hot screen faces and rock stars hang out in The Sunset Marquee behind the Strip or on the Santa Monica waterfront. Silkier movie skins, power brokers and minor royals disappear into the plush monasticity of the Bel -Air. The hotel runs on a fuel rich in serenity and fancies itself as removed from ’town’. It really is wise to take a book. The hotel is a warren, which defies any uniformity. Pinning down an ambience is like spearing tofu. It’s a hacienda. Then again it’s an Italian hillside village. Or is it the French Quarter? No, it’s Cornwall. Three sides of the grounds are walled-in and the front is bounded by a stream flowing into a pond that’s home to the hotel’s four swans. So many society girls want to get married by that pond, they have to book the ceremony two years in advance... and then go and find a man. I was lodged in the bar of polished oak and oils with a bottle of wine, staring at the corner seat where Howard Hughes used to structure business empires on bar mats. I was thrilling with anticipation. Amongst all the meandering interlocking rooms, suites and bungalows, no two are the same. Which one was I going to get? Possibly imagining my 250lbs in tights and a tutu, they showed me to the Swan Lake Suite, a bungalow behind a white picket fence, 750sq ft, with a 600sq ft patio. As far as it possibly dares to at these prices, the Bel-Air goes for a palatial simplicity. The suites are miniatures of country houses; toy dream homes with all the messy bits like kitchens lopped off. I could imagine Nicholas II and his little tsaritsas enjoying it. They would have told the servant to light the fire (real wood with gas) flop into the deep, if indeterminate, sofas and let the dogs run. I took a jacuzzi bath, looking through French windows onto the patio, then wandered into the pathways past room # 99 (a favourite of David Niven’s), tucked behind the pool diving board where Monroe posed; past #155 where Mario Lanzo rattled the window panes then past #140 where Judy Garland’s pill boxes fought for space with the bottles and back to the bar where I fell in amongst a pack of Republican film producers. The Duke of York was there enjoying himself amongst admiring Republican womanhood. I looked away. In the Bel-Air, you may spot celebreties but you don’t show it. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman have eaten at an adjacent table but never came across to bother me. Warren Beatty once nodded at me, obviously a mistake, but I just kept on eating. Dinner on The Terrace was a filling fusion of Europe and California prepared by the English head chef Thomas Hanson, who is not frightened of facing the picky California rich with meat and two veg - although he occasionally fuses Europe and Mexico, and the violently late emperor Maximilian would tell you that doesn’t always work. Lunch there is a social event in Los Angeles and quite do-able the year round thanks to heaters installed overhead in the arbor and radiant heating under the floor tiles. That is a small part of a very understated renovation job - a `nip and tuck’ operation, performed on this 54 year old lady over the last three years, probably saving her life. There was a point breforehand when she was looking tired in the face, ever charming but getting on and not worth spending quite so much on. When I stayed in 1996 the staff were offhand and my bedside table was made of a two-ply circle on a stand. Now there is a restoration spring in her step. You never see a wrinkle. Nancy Reagan who lunches here three times a week got to the point of nip and tuck when she asked Frank Bowling, the general manager, `Very nice Frank, but what have you actually done?’ The Bel-Air is not for those who value the more strident facilities of the international five-star. It is not for those who pride themselves on knowing the value of money. It is the converted ranch format - much favoured by the Americans -applied with a plutocratic intensity. And it does without that awful LA poolside snobbery, so rampant in the Beverly Hills Hotel - where the favoured always get the best spots and cabanas. The Bel-Air’s pool is an oval shape and folk flop around it at will. I remember in ’96 lying there with a movie producer’s power breakfast going on. An actress whose name I couldn’t remember thought she knew mine and kept smiling cautiously at me. Nobody knew who anybody was - or much cared. They plan to put the rooms on-line soon. Mrs Reagan will have something to say about that. I’d still take a book.

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• "Discreet, polished and surrounded by lushly manicured gardens, the Bel-Air is a home-from-home for celebrities and socialites."

  Acres of parkland dotted with villas helps this old-world charmer retain a whiff of an older, more glamourous Hollywood.