The Peninsula Beverly Hills

Santa Monica Boulevard meets Wilshire at the western edge of Beverly Hills, and on that corner, behind a hedge and a lawn, The Peninsula Beverly Hills has stood since August 1991. The hotel is low, four storeys of cream stucco around a garden, and it looks more like a large house than most of the city's hotels. The agents of Century City and the studios of the Westside treat its lobby as a meeting room.

History

The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, owners of The Peninsula in Hong Kong since 1928, opened their first hotel in the United States in New York in 1988 and their second here in 1991. The Beverly Hills house was built new, in a French-inspired style of the kind the city favoured, on a site at 9882 South Santa Monica Boulevard. From the start it set out to be the hotel of the entertainment business, and its Belvedere restaurant and lobby lounge became the Westside's dining rooms for deals. Renovations in the 2010s updated the rooms and villas without changing the plan.

Architecture and design

The hotel wraps around a courtyard garden of roses and fountains, with the villas set along paths beyond the main building. Interiors use pale wood, floral fabrics and antiques in an English and French country manner, lighter than the Hong Kong flagship. The Roof Garden holds the pool, its cabanas and a terrace restaurant, with views over the rooftops to the Hollywood Hills. The Living Room, off the lobby, is the lounge for afternoon tea, with a fireplace and a pianist in the evening.

Rooms and suites

The Peninsula Beverly Hills has 195 rooms, including 38 suites and 16 villas in the garden. The villas are the hotel's signature: private houses of one to three bedrooms along the garden paths, with their own entrances, fireplaces and in some cases private terraces or spa tubs. Rooms in the main building face the garden or the boulevards. The hotel's flexible check-in, introduced in 2013, lets guests arrive and leave at any hour and keep the room for 24 hours from arrival.

Dining

The Belvedere, the main restaurant, serves Californian cooking with a terrace onto the garden and has been the setting for the city's working breakfasts and lunches for three decades. The Living Room serves afternoon tea, a Beverly Hills institution with its tiered stands and the Peninsula's own blends. The Roof Garden restaurant serves lunch and dinner by the pool, and The Club Bar, panelled in wood, is the bar for the evening, with a terrace.

Wellness

The Peninsula Spa is on the roof beside the pool, with treatment rooms, a sauna, a steam room and a fitness centre. The rooftop pool, heated and lined with cabanas, is open year round. The hotel keeps a fleet of Rolls-Royce cars and BMW bicycles for guests, and the shops of Rodeo Drive are a ten-minute walk east along Wilshire.

Weddings and events

The hotel hosts weddings in its garden and ballroom, with the villas taking the wedding party, and corporate events and screenings in its meeting rooms. The Roof Garden is used for receptions around the pool. Capacities depend on the room and the layout, and the hotel's events team sets them for each occasion.

Location

The hotel stands at the junction of Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards, between Beverly Hills and Century City. Rodeo Drive and the shops of the Golden Triangle are a ten-minute walk; Century City's offices and the Westfield mall are five minutes by car. Los Angeles International Airport is about 30 to 45 minutes depending on traffic, and the beaches of Santa Monica 20 minutes west along the boulevard. Among the luxury hotels in Beverly Hills it has kept the smallest scale and the fullest address book.