Perched above the Pacific in Santa Monica, Oceana Beach Club Hotel is a sleek, Art Deco resort touting a lobby, courtyard, and restaurant newly renovated by award-winning designer Anthony Baratta.
While guests enjoy the amenities and service of a top beach destination, it’s the laid-back, barefoot-in-the-sand attitude that really wins them over.
Sure, there’s a fitness room, but no one needs to use it because the hotel offers complimentary outdoor yoga, surfing lessons, guided hikes to Temescal Canyon, and beach cruisers to explore Santa Monica’s Abbott Kinney Boulevard and Third Street Promenade.
Although many of the 70 rooms and suites feature lovely furnished balconies, go for the Signature Ocean View Suite ($650 to $1,250 a night), which boasts a spacious, sun-splashed living room, bedroom, and a large bath with a rain shower, soaking tub, Frette bath linens, and C.O. Bigelow Apothecary toiletries.
Come evening, head down to two-Michelin-star chef Josiah Citrin’s farm-to-table Tower 8—open only to hotel guests—and savor a quiet al fresco meal by the pool and outdoor fireplace, or in the posh new dining room overlooking the ocean.