The Beverly Hills Hotel opened on 12 May 1912, before Beverly Hills was a city, as somewhere for people looking at land in the area to stay. Margaret Anderson founded it, it was painted pink in 1948, and it has been the Pink Palace ever since. Paul R. Williams added the Crescent Wing in 1949 and reimagined the lobby, the Polo Lounge and the Fountain Coffee Room, and the Martinique banana-leaf wallpaper, designed in 1942 and first hung here in 1949, became the pattern the hotel is known by. In 2012 the City of Beverly Hills named it its first historic landmark, and it holds three MICHELIN Keys in the 2026 selection, one of two in the Los Angeles area, with Hotel Bel-Air, to do so.
There are more than 200 rooms and suites, split between the main house and bungalows, in 12 acres of gardens. The Superior Room is about 400 sq ft (37 m²) and the Deluxe about 525 sq ft (49 m²), with Frette linen and marble bathrooms. The first five bungalows went up in the gardens in 1915, ahead of the visitors expected that year for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, each with its own living room, fireplace and patio. The Bungalow Room, about 475 sq ft (44 m²), is sold with a king bed or two doubles, a garden view and a quiet, private setting, and the Beverly Hills Bungalow Suite adds a working fireplace and a private veranda.
The reason to book is the cast of places rather than the rooms. The Polo Lounge, 85 years old in 2026, has a candy-striped dining room, a patio under palm trees, a piano at lunch and dinner and the McCarthy salad. The Fountain Coffee Room has served from a curved counter since 1949, with silver dollar pancakes for breakfast. The pool dates to 1938, when it opened as the Sand and Pool Club, and it is lined with green-and-white striped loungers, a few pink ones and pink private cabanas that seat four. It is for hotel guests only.
The trade is the bill and the distance. The Superior Room is about $1,090 a night before tax on an early December Tuesday, with hotel tax of roughly 15.5 to 16 per cent and parking at $70 a day on top. The beach is a 19-minute drive with the roads clear, Hollywood 14 and Rodeo Drive five, so almost everything is by car. Guests praise the staff and the grounds and weigh the prices. Book it for a first Los Angeles trip, an anniversary or a family that wants a pool with a story, and take a garden bungalow over a bigger room in the main house.
