Regent Santa Monica Beach

Regent Santa Monica Beach opened on 1 October 2024 in the rebranded former Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, bringing the brand back to the United States for the first time in decades. The 167 rooms and suites start at an unusually generous 720 square feet, and the resort pairs a Michael Mina restaurant with the first Guerlain Wellness spa on the West Coast.

The place

The resort sits on Ocean Avenue, directly above Santa Monica Beach and a few minutes' walk from the Santa Monica Pier, with most rooms facing the Pacific. It occupies the building that traded for decades as the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, at the northern end of the beachfront hotel strip.

The concept

Regent Santa Monica Beach is the first Regent in the Americas and the brand's flagship for the region. Regent was born in 1970 and had a Los Angeles address long before this one — the Regent Beverly Wilshire, the hotel used as the setting for Pretty Woman — but the name had disappeared from the United States entirely before IHG acquired it in 2018 and set about reviving it. The property is a conversion rather than a new build: Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel announced its rebranding under the Regent flag in March 2023, closed for a full reworking, and reopened on 1 October 2024. The rebuild was aimed squarely at space. Entry-level rooms start at 720 square feet, roughly double what most beachfront hotels in the city offer, and the top suites go much further: the Santa Monica Presidential Suite runs to 3,200 square feet with separate living, dining and game rooms, while a two-storey oceanfront suite spans 2,180 square feet across the second and third floors. AvroKO's San Francisco studio handled the public spaces, working a nautical register of brass archways, yacht-style flooring and sand tones; Wimberly Interiors took the rooms and the spa. Each room comes with a Refreshment Gallery stocked to the guest's stated preferences before arrival, and a Regent Experience Manager acts as a single point of contact from booking to departure.

Dining & wellness

Four food and drink outlets. Orla and Orla Bar are the work of James Beard-winning chef Michael Mina, pairing Mediterranean cooking with Californian produce in a room built around a handmade Pompeii mosaic laid by sixteen Sicis master mosaicists. Azure Bar serves the pool deck, and Sweet July Café is the first expansion beyond the Bay Area for Ayesha Curry's lifestyle brand, with a menu drawing on Californian farmers' markets and her Jamaican background. Wellness runs through the 10,000-square-foot Guerlain Wellness spa — the French house's first on the West Coast — with twelve treatment rooms, gendered lounges with plunge pools, sauna and steam room, a champagne room and a retail boutique. The Azure Pool sits above the beach with cabanas and sunbeds, and the fitness centre opens from 5am to 10pm.