At Stay In The New, we track every hotel that has opened or reopened in Palm Springs within the last two years — verified dates, and an honest word about the ones that no longer count as new.
THE NEWEST HOTELS. THE BEST STAYS.
A Stay In The New curated city guide
Every hotel below opened within the last two years — verified dates, no older properties dressed up as new. The desert's boutique scene is deep, but genuinely recent openings are a shorter list than most guides admit.
Opened Aug 2025
A 1943 Errol Flynn estate reborn as a racquet, swim and social club. Casa Palma Hotel & Bungalows opened August 2025 on the historic Normandy Hotel site, spreading 33 rooms and suites across 2.5 acres of citrus and olive groves a mile from downtown. The Mediterranean-inspired retreat pairs two pools rigged for water volleyball and basketball with a tennis court and pickleball overlays, the Chiquita restaurant, fire pits, and complimentary bikes for cruising into town.
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Opened Jan 2025
Palm Springs' first hotel built entirely around wellness. The 13-room Terra Palm Springs opened January 2025 steps from downtown on Indian Canyon Drive, with a desert healing circuit — Himalayan salt sauna, cold plunge and an immersive rain room — all complimentary and open 24/7. Rooms feature private patios, plunge pools and fire pits, with Le Labo bath products and spa suites adding red-light therapy and soaking tubs.
Why Overpay? See the Lowest Rate →
Opened Oct 2024
The desert's most anticipated opening in years, and the first collaboration between Hyatt and Dallas-based HALL Group. Thompson Palm Springs opened October 2024 with 168 bungalow-inspired rooms and suites, each with a private balcony framing the San Jacinto Mountains, spanning two-and-a-half city blocks on Palm Canyon Drive downtown. A rooftop skyline pool and swim club crowns Lola Rose Grand Mezze, the Levantine restaurant from Chef Quentin Garcia, alongside Bar Issi and a HALL Napa Valley tasting room. World of Hyatt points eligible.
Why Overpay? See the Lowest Rate →
Opened Late 2024
A 1948 courtyard hotel brought back by three former tech colleagues. The Cactai opened in late 2024 in the building that debuted as Los Dolores and was later owned by actor Stubby Kaye, on East Camino Monte Vista in the Uptown Design District. The 12 apartment-sized rooms run full kitchens or kitchenettes, Japanese heated bidet toilets, and original work by local artists that guests can buy off the wall. A year-round heated pool and hot tub anchor the courtyard. The owners bill it as the first AI-managed hotel in Palm Springs, with a digital concierge handling check-in and recommendations. Adults-only, and dog-friendly for a flat fee.
Why Overpay? See the Lowest Rate →Palm Springs has a deep boutique scene, but several of its best-known small hotels — the Velvet Rope, Jazz Hotel, The Lucille and Yara Hotel — opened in 2023 and 2024 and now fall outside our two-year window. We cover them in the neighborhood guide below rather than listing them as new.
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The desert pipeline is short but consequential — a landmark returning under a major flag, a large conversion on the south side, and a surf resort arriving in phases.
The most consequential return in the desert. The Riviera is going back to its mid-century roots under IHG as part of a multi-year renovation reintroducing Rat Pack-era glamour through refreshed rooms and reimagined dining. The resort closes from June through December 2026 to finish the work, with reopening planned for early 2027 — which means it is unavailable for most of this year's booking window.
Get alerts when this opens →The largest hotel project on the south side in years. Palisociety is converting a long-vacant Days Inn on Sunny Dunes Road into a 179-room property, nearly doubling the original room count with a new two-story building, a relocated lobby and restaurant, and the Livs Palm Springs cafe. It is among sixteen Palisociety hotels joining the Design Hotels portfolio. We will confirm the opening date here as soon as it is announced.
Get alerts when this opens →Worth being precise about, because most coverage is not. Phase 1 this summer is the 5.5-acre Wavegarden surf lagoon and leisure pool only — capable of up to 1,000 waves an hour, sitting between the golf courses at Desert Willow, about twenty minutes from downtown Palm Springs. The 139-key barefoot-luxury hotel and 57 private villas are Phase 2, following the lagoon debut, with no opening date announced. Until then it is a day trip, not a place to stay.
Get alerts when this opens →Know of a new Palm Springs hotel we should track? Let us know →
Opening timelines shift as projects move through construction. We update this page as dates are confirmed.
Palm Springs is compact enough to cross in fifteen minutes, so the question is rarely distance. It is whether you want downtown noise, design-district quiet, a residential street with a pool to yourself, or the wider valley. Here is where the new hotels landed, where the recent-but-no-longer-new ones sit, and who each pocket suits.
The heart of it — restaurants, galleries, the Thursday VillageFest street fair and the Art Museum all within a stroll, and the only part of the city where you can park once and leave the car. It is also the loudest, and the blocks nearest the main drag stay busy well past dinner. Thompson Palm Springs anchors Palm Canyon Drive across two-and-a-half city blocks, with the rooftop pool and swim club that reset expectations for the whole market when it opened. A few streets east on Indian Canyon, Terra Palm Springs runs the opposite play at thirteen rooms — a wellness circuit of salt sauna, cold plunge and rain room rather than a scene. Between them you have the two most different new hotels in the city within a five-minute walk. Worth comparing downtown Palm Springs hotel rates across a few date ranges before deciding what central actually costs.
North Palm Canyon, where the mid-century furniture dealers, galleries and the better restaurants cluster. Quieter than downtown by a noticeable margin, still walkable to it, and the part of town people mean when they say Palm Springs looks like Palm Springs. The Cactai is the recent arrival here — twelve apartment-sized rooms in a restored 1948 courtyard property, adults-only, with local art hung in every room and available to buy. The Jazz Hotel sits nearby at eleven rooms and opened a little earlier, outside our two-year window but still one of the better small stays on this stretch. The district's biggest story is a return rather than an arrival: the historic Riviera Palm Springs is being reborn under IHG and closed for the back half of 2026. Compare Uptown Design District hotel rates against downtown for the same nights; the gap is usually smaller than the quiet is worth.
The leafy enclave where Hollywood's elite built their winter estates, and still the most photographed residential grid in the city. Walking distance to downtown without any of the noise, and almost nothing new gets built here because almost nothing can be. The Velvet Rope is the property people ask about — nine Old Hollywood-themed suites inside a 1952 Herbert Burns building, with the speakeasy-style Bar Valerie. It opened in December 2023, which puts it past our two-year line, so we no longer list it as new; it remains one of the most distinctive rooms in Palm Springs regardless. If vintage glamour is the point of the trip, compare Old Las Palmas hotel rates early — the inventory here is tiny and does not expand.
The residential south end trades bustle for palm-lined streets and small inns where you may be one of ten guests. You will drive or bike to dinner, and in exchange you get silence and a pool that is effectively yours. The Mediterranean Yara Hotel hides out in Tahquitz River Estates as a ten-room adults-only retreat, and The Lucille Palm Springs — the reimagined Andalusian Court, named for a famous former guest — sits closer to the museum. Both were revived in 2023 and 2024 and now fall outside the two-year window, so they live here rather than in our cards above. The area's future is Palihotel Palm Springs, the 179-room Palisociety conversion of a long-vacant Days Inn on Sunny Dunes Road, which will be by far the largest hotel on this side of town. Compare South Palm Springs hotel rates against downtown and the saving is usually real.
A pocket of old Hollywood estates just north of downtown, close enough to bike in and far enough that the streets are quiet after dark. It has become the city's best area for groups, largely because of one property. Casa Palma Hotel & Bungalows opened here in August 2025 on the site of Errol Flynn's 1943 Normandy Hotel — 33 rooms and suites across 2.5 acres of citrus and olive groves, with two pools rigged for water volleyball and basketball, a tennis court with pickleball overlays, the Chiquita restaurant and bikes for the ride downtown. It is the newest full-service option in the city and the one built for a group that wants to stay put. Compare Casa Palma rates in Palm Springs against the downtown hotels; for four or more people the math often flips.
Beyond the city limits the valley opens into Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert and La Quinta, where the land is cheaper and the resorts are bigger. This is where golf lives, and increasingly where the ambitious projects land. The one to watch is DSRT Surf in Palm Desert, about twenty minutes southeast between the golf courses at Desert Willow. Its 5.5-acre Wavegarden lagoon opens this summer and can produce up to a thousand waves an hour; the 139-key hotel and 57 villas are a later phase with no date announced, so for now it is a day trip from a Palm Springs base rather than somewhere to stay. Compare Coachella Valley hotel rates against Palm Springs proper if your trip is built around golf or the festival grounds.
Rates across every one of these areas move with the calendar more than the address. High summer is the cheapest stretch of the year in the desert by a wide margin, while Modernism Week in February and the spring festival weekends reprice the entire valley months ahead.
What is actually new in Palm Springs right now, what is coming, and what everyone else is still calling new when it is not.
Casa Palma Hotel & Bungalows is the most recent opening, arriving in August 2025 on the historic site of Errol Flynn's 1943 Normandy Hotel — 33 rooms and suites across 2.5 acres a mile from downtown, with two pools, a tennis court with pickleball overlays and the Chiquita restaurant. Before it, Terra Palm Springs opened in January 2025 and The Cactai in late 2024.
Thompson Palm Springs, by a wide margin. It opened in October 2024 with 168 bungalow-inspired rooms and suites spanning two-and-a-half city blocks on Palm Canyon Drive, the first collaboration between Hyatt and Dallas-based HALL Group. A rooftop skyline pool and swim club sits above Lola Rose Grand Mezze, Bar Issi and a HALL Napa Valley tasting room. World of Hyatt points eligible.
Yes. Terra Palm Springs opened in January 2025 as the city's first hotel built entirely around wellness. The 13-room downtown retreat runs a desert healing circuit — Himalayan salt sauna, cold plunge and an immersive rain room, all complimentary and open around the clock — with rooms featuring private patios, plunge pools and fire pits, and spa suites adding red-light therapy and soaking tubs.
The Cactai is the newest, opening in late 2024 in a restored 1948 courtyard property in the Uptown Design District — twelve apartment-sized rooms, 21-and-over, with a year-round heated pool and hot tub. Palm Springs has a deep adults-only tradition beyond it, though most of the well-known small properties opened earlier than our two-year window. Policies vary, so confirm directly when booking.
The Riviera Palm Springs returns in early 2027 under IHG after a multi-year renovation, closing from June through December 2026 to finish the work. Palisociety is converting a vacant Days Inn on Sunny Dunes Road into the 179-room Palihotel Palm Springs, the largest project on the south side in years. In Palm Desert, DSRT Surf opens its surf lagoon this summer, with its hotel and villas in a later phase.
High summer, and it is not close. July and August heat pushes desert rates to their lowest point of the year, often less than half what the same room costs in season. The expensive stretches are the opposite of most destinations: Modernism Week in February, the spring festival weekends, and the pleasant-weather months either side of them. Midweek beats weekend in every season here.
Palm Springs has been a desert escape since Hollywood's golden age, and its hotel scene works differently from anywhere else in California. The city is built on small properties — courtyard inns of ten or twelve rooms, mid-century buildings by named architects, pools ringed by a dozen loungers rather than a hundred. That texture is the appeal, and it is also why "new" here means something different than it does in a market full of towers. A single restoration can change the character of a street.
The headline arrival of the current cycle is Thompson Palm Springs, the first project between Hyatt and HALL Group, spanning two-and-a-half blocks of Palm Canyon Drive with a rooftop pool and swim club, a Levantine restaurant and a Napa tasting room on the ground floor. It brought a scale of hospitality downtown had not seen in decades. Casa Palma Hotel & Bungalows followed on the site of Errol Flynn's old Normandy estate, turning 2.5 acres of citrus and olive groves into a racquet, swim and social club aimed squarely at groups.
The two smallest recent openings are the most Palm Springs of the group. Terra Palm Springs built the city's first hotel organised entirely around wellness — a salt sauna, cold plunge and rain room, complimentary and open around the clock, across just thirteen rooms steps from downtown. The Cactai revived a 1948 courtyard property in the Uptown Design District as an adults-only stay of twelve apartment-sized rooms, hung with work by local artists that guests can buy off the wall.
It is worth being honest about the rest. Palm Springs added a cluster of excellent small hotels a little earlier in this cycle — the Velvet Rope in Old Las Palmas, the Jazz Hotel uptown, The Lucille near the museum and the Yara Hotel in Tahquitz River Estates. Most lists still present them as new. They are not, by our standard, and you will find them in the neighborhood guide above rather than among our current openings. They remain very good places to stay.
What is ahead matters more than usual here. The Riviera Palm Springs is being reborn under IHG, closing for part of the year to finish a renovation that returns the landmark to its mid-century roots. Palihotel Palm Springs will convert a long-vacant property on Sunny Dunes Road into 179 rooms, the largest addition the south side has seen in years. And out in Palm Desert, DSRT Surf is bringing a Wavegarden lagoon to the valley, with its hotel and villas to follow in a later phase. We track all three here and update as dates are confirmed.
Practical questions about staying in Palm Springs and the wider Coachella Valley.
Casa Palma Hotel & Bungalows is the clear pick — two pools rigged for water volleyball and basketball, a tennis court with pickleball overlays, lawns and groves across 2.5 acres, and the option to buy out the whole property. Thompson Palm Springs works well for larger parties that want downtown on their doorstep and a full-service hotel around them. Note that several of the city's small boutiques are adults-only, so check age policies before booking with children.
The Cactai welcomes well-behaved dogs for a flat fee per stay, with leash rules in common areas. Palm Springs is broadly a dog-friendly city — many restaurants have patios that allow them — but hotel policies, fees and weight limits vary a great deal between properties, and small boutiques change them more often than chains do. Confirm directly with the hotel rather than relying on a listing page.
Thompson Palm Springs has the rooftop skyline pool and swim club, which is the social one and the one with the mountain view. Casa Palma runs two pools built for actually playing in rather than posing beside. Terra Palm Springs takes the opposite approach with in-room plunge pools and a wellness circuit instead of a scene. In a city where the pool is often the reason for the trip, those three cover very different versions of the same day.
Thompson Palm Springs sits directly on Palm Canyon Drive in the heart of downtown, and Terra Palm Springs is a short walk away on Indian Canyon. Both put you within strolling distance of the restaurants, galleries, the Art Museum and the Thursday VillageFest street fair. The Cactai is in the Uptown Design District a little further north — quieter, still walkable to the shops and restaurants on North Palm Canyon.
Not as a hotel, and this is widely misreported. DSRT Surf's first phase is the 5.5-acre Wavegarden surf lagoon and leisure pool in Palm Desert, opening summer 2026 between the golf courses at Desert Willow. The 139-key hotel and 57 private villas are a second phase following the lagoon debut, with no opening date announced. For now it is roughly a twenty-minute drive from downtown Palm Springs and works as a day trip from a hotel in the city.
Thompson Palm Springs is the only recent opening attached to a major program — it is part of World of Hyatt, so it earns and redeems Hyatt points. Casa Palma, Terra Palm Springs and The Cactai are independents without a loyalty tie-in, which is typical of this market and part of why the city's hotel scene stays distinctive. The forthcoming Riviera Palm Springs will join IHG One Rewards when it reopens.
Because they no longer are. We only list hotels that opened or reopened within the last two years, and properties like the Velvet Rope, Jazz Hotel, The Lucille and the Yara Hotel arrived in 2023 and 2024 — genuinely new at the time, past our window now. Most Palm Springs hotel lists still present them as recent openings. We move them into the neighborhood guide instead, because a directory of new hotels stops being useful the moment it stops being strict about the word.
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