Nowadays, the word “luxury” is vague and overused in the travel industry. Every influencer and their Pomeranian specialises in “luxury.” Every travel writer and blogger specialises in “luxury”. Everyone wants a piece of that upper-crust lifestyle (very understandable), but few understand that genuine luxury goes far, far beyond aesthetics, location and exclusivity.
You cannot claim luxury without soul. It’s what ties all the other – less meaningful – stuff together.
I’ve been reviewing luxury properties for years now; not all are made equal. Sometimes the food is by-the-numbers, sometimes the service is snotty and exclusive. Often, the property is groaning under the weight of self-important guests – the type White Lotus was made for – and entitled two-bit influencers.
None of these things feel good. Luxury is about how you feel.
Do I feel like a guest, or a number? Does this food and wine taste good because I’m paying such a high price, or is there meaning to what’s being served? Does this hotel want to keep me sucked into its ecosystem so I keep feeding it money, or does it actually care about my experience as a whole?
There are so many more considerations than “is it exclusive? Does this make me feel better than other people?” When you strip down luxury to its bare bones, you realise that the real premium experience is feeling like you matter.
Staying at The Maybourne Beverly Hills does have a stuffy air of exclusivity about it. It’s one of the most highly sought-after luxury hotels in Los Angeles. It has been since it first opened under the Montage brand in 2008. Yet the palatial property’s open, transportive design, exceptional service, and top-shelf comfort place it in the top tier for Los Angeles’ luxury set.
Yes, it’s pricey, but it’s memorable and feels like an uncommon experience for the average traveller.
That’s because the hotel miraculously manages to feel unpretentious and inclusive, in a part of town that’s known for being the exact opposite. There’s some real soul to what The Maybourne Group have done to this property, with the help of one of the world’s very best bars, a palpable commitment to community, and a playful experience that cuts through the seriousness of it all.
Read below for my full Maybourne Beverly Hills review.
Location
You’ll find The Maybourne Beverly Hills in the ritzy Golden Triangle, a stupidly expensive luxury shopping and dining precinct bounded by Wilshire, Santa Monica and Canon. The most known entity within this confected shape is Rodeo Drive, a lifeless collection of high-end designer boutiques surrounded by brands like Chanel, Gucci, Ralph Lauren and Hermes.
There’s almost zero personality to that side of Beverly Hills, but The Maybourne sticks out like a sore thumb. The nine-floor property looks like a big, bodacious palace in a sea of carbon-copy white. A slick horseshoe driveway loops off North Canon Drive and Clifton Way, usually populated by highly polished luxury vehicles and the hotel’s own house cars (more on that later – I love the house cars)
You’ll find all of Beverly Hills’ known beats nearby. America’s famously expensive Erewhon Market (apparently the priciest organic grocer in the country) is but a five-minute walk away. I could afford a juice, but that’s about it. Yes, Beverly Hills isn’t as big and tough to navigate as somewhere like DTLA, but the convenience still matters for anyone who isn’t fond of walking long distances.
Design
The Maybourne’s size is its strength. Its highly ornate facade reflects the grand palaces you’ll find buried in the Italian countryside, favouring a European style but brightening that with coastal Californian design. Think gorgeous pastel pinks tastefully flowing throughout the hotel, from the entrance and its various nooks, to the oversized guest rooms.
Much of this is heightened by abstract modern art, contrasted brilliantly with the classic, old-fashioned opulence that trails through the perfumed lobby to the gorgeously maintained Beverly Cañon Gardens.
When it was the Montage, the building apparently leaned almost entirely on a Spanish Colonial design. The Maybourne Group reflagged the property in 2023 and set a top-to-bottom makeover that gives the property a nice diversity, a mish-mash of European and American accents that likely speaks to the group’s nascent US expansion (this is the British luxury brand’s first, and so far only, property in the US).
The gorgeous Beverly Canon Gardens is the only part of the property that maintains that Spanish revivalist approach. It’s the kind of love-at-first-sight feature that really makes you excited about checking in. The green space is framed by great big columns, the hotel’s signature restaurant – The Terrace – and an awkwardly casual cafe that doesn’t feel like it’s part of the hotel at all.
Sprawled out on these lawns is the hotel’s palpable sense of community. The gardens are wide open at either end, connecting Beverly and Canon Drives, with 3,065 square metres of landscaped features, colonnades, and shaded walkways. In the centre stands an ornate fountain, anchoring the peaceful atmosphere in something that feels completely and utterly out of place in the 90210.
There are numerous sunny spots for a morning coffee, but fountain-side seating is the place to be. I’d imagine plenty of locals like to just come here and read.
On my visit, the hotel seems to be preparing for a costume-mandatory anniversary screening of Clueless. I’m told the live music hosts a string of live music during summer, and I can just imagine a row of colourful picnic blankets spread across the open lawn. Life here seems so, so easy.
According to a brief I stumbled upon online, the concert series isn’t just “unadventurous yet pleasant” acoustic sets. It’s a weekly procession of soul, rock, jazz, Caribbean, Brazilian, maybe even some Klezmer. I feel this is important to point out because it shows that the hotel has discernment that goes beyond its amenities, not content to just rest on the fact that this is a very nice hotel.
The Maybourne is all about detail. Designer Bryan O’Sullivan helped widen the interiors to feel spacious and lived-in, creating little private corners in the public areas and filling these with bespoke furnishings, always keeping that very calm, beautiful pastel approach in mind to help offset the stateliness of features like a gorgeous winding staircase and the requisite glass cabinets showing off independent local designers.
Rooms
My Terrace Junior Suite is another love-at-first-sight moment. The pastel palette comes back to play, helping balance that old-world opulence with California’s coastal aesthetic. At 62.24 square metres, the large room is split by folding French doors that can be used to separate the oversized lounge room from the bedroom.
An elegant terrace overlooking a private lawn seems almost too perfect for your typical hotel breakfast Instagram shot; I imagine there’s already a hashtag flooded with them. The inclusion seems necessary, completing a picture of flawless luxury that doesn’t shout too loud, but isn’t exactly shy about its prowess.
The standards are here. The ultra-high 600-thread count linens and thick, weighty blanket, ready, willing and able to squash you to sleep. The sumptuous marble bathroom with carefully carved details and silky smooth amenities, seamlessly flowing from the room with a white, bright and minimalist design. The premium-only minibar that you wouldn’t dare touch unless you had an expense account to play with.
It’s a peaceful retreat within a hotel that already knows how to soothe from the very first impression. And the turndown service? Superb. The Maybourne’s robes are fairly standard, but wearing those slippers is like walking on a cloud. Both are waiting for me, neatly laid out on the bedroom bench each time I walk back into the room. The scene is perpetually set to chill.
Food & Drink
The Terrace restaurant has its indulgences, but clean eating is obviously the approach for this lovely all-day al fresco restaurant. I pop down for breakfast twice during my stay, and can’t get enough of the gorgeous eggs Benedict that feels light and fresh with French Bayonne ham, a modest dusting of luxurious truffles and the most gorgeously crisp breakfast potatoes you can dream of.
On my second day, I give myself over to the Hacienda vibe of it all and tuck into huevos rancheros.
The Terrace is clearly popular throughout the day. The menu has all bases covered, even having a section just for Golden Hour. I’m also shocked to see a $39, three-course fixed price lunch menu at such a lavish Beverly Hills hotel.
Whenever I land in New York City, without fail, the first thing I’m thinking of is grabbing a martini at Dante West Village. To me, it’s the single best martini menu in the world. I’m far from alone in that opinion. Dante has been pitched as the world’s best bar on numerous occasions. In my opinion, it still is.
And so I’m delighted to learn that the rooftop pool bleeds into a restaurant and bar: Dante Beverly Hills. A ritzy L.A. outpost for the NYC staple should go down well, and here it’s augmented by a hard-working pizza oven that stands in its own section between the restaurant and the pool.
Dante’s dining space is spectacular. I walk into an oversized view of the Hollywood Hills that, despite The Maybourne only being nine storeys high, feels like the apex of Los Angeles’ many rooftops. The design is gorgeous, from the cove ceiling with Abel Macias’ elegant hummingbird mural (that attracts real hummingbirds each day) to tall textured blue banquets that curve around for ultimate privacy and reflective mirrors that play with the view from different perspectives.
And those martinis? Every bit as good as the ones in NYC. In fact, it’s the same list of signatures, including the namesake concoction, instantly recognisable with its use of three oversized olives: one black, one green, and one red. I lose count of how many I consume across three days while lazing beside The Maybourne’s beautiful 14-metre pool, which is framed by private cabanas but also, brilliantly, soft cushioned surfaces by the water’s edge that you can lie on.
The menu is as you’d expect from coastal Californian, dominated by its very reasonable signature burger and those beautiful woodfired pizzas that are light, fluffy and rich in flavour. I’ve eaten at around seven pizza places across L.A. over the years, and Dante Beverly Hills is a clear winner – simple, delicious pizzas that you could handle solo without feeling guilty.
Amenities
One of L.A.’s largest spas is completely at your disposal if you’re a guest at the hotel. Across 1,858 square metres, you’ve got a Moroccan-inspired raid mineral pool, Turkish steam rooms, saunas and numerous treatment rooms for expensive personalised massages, body rituals and facials.
The shop is, as you’d expect, a showcase of high-end skincare products.
The Maybourne Beverly Hills spa is the only one in the country to stock Ila products, I’m told, and celebrity favourites like Dr Barbara Sturm and Yumi HydraSpa are also featured. Yet the spa keeps things very simple, moving away from the more-is-more spas that you’ll find in big Las Vegas resorts and more towards something genuinely built for calm, unconcerned with wellness evolutions like sound bathing and chromotherapy booths.
A 10-minute soak in that raid mineral pool genuinely transforms the way my feet feel after seven weeks clocking at least 20,000 steps daily while travelling around the US.
Yet the bath doesn’t perk me up enough to throw myself at the hotel’s fully-stocked fitness centre. As tempting as it is, however, considering the very modern gym is brimming with big names like Peloton and Technogym, showcasing their latest, highly polished machines that look like they go through a rigorous cleaning schedule every morning.
The hotel has two house cars and they each offer guests a very different experience. There’s an elegant, immaculate BMW i7 that suite guests have access to, but I’m more interested in the bright pink Moke jeep, which I take for a spin around the streets of Beverly Hills while blasting “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind.
The simple, life-affirming drive is the reason why I think short-term guests should be aware of every service a hotel offers. I would have felt an enormous swell of regret if I left L.A., and then realised I could have spent hours driving a pink jeep around Beverly Hills with the Californian sun constantly darting between those impossibly tall palm trees.
It is awkwardly placed, but if you descend the staircase, you’ll find a very British-like barbershop squashed into the corner, looking appropriately lush with austere wood panelling and rows of high-end products.
Service
The Maybourne Group’s first property was The Connaught, one of the most renowned luxury hotels in history and a true bucket-list stay for any traveller of taste. That reputation is matched by the group’s other London properties – Claridge’s, The Berkeley and fresher-faced The Emory. I’m only familiar with The Connaught’s history: one of lifestyle leadership (especially where cocktails are concerned) and studied reinvention.
This also means that the hotel knows the true value of service. Make everyone feel like a guest, not a number. No one’s more important than anyone else. Everyone matters. Everyone’s equal. Be personable and friendly, but know when to back off.
Service is the secret that ties everything together for a luxury hotel, and The Maybourne Group clearly know this. Here, it’s intuitive and authentic, knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet so I can glide through the hotel seamlessly.
Value
At around AU$1,920 per night, The Maybourne Beverly Hills is a special-occasion stay for most and a casual indulgence for the artists, celebrities and musicians who orbit Los Angeles. Yes, it’s hard to justify a rate like that in a city crowded with excellent hotels, but The Maybourne earns it.
It isn’t luxury by numbers. Every detail feels considered, from the intuitive service to the sense of calm that follows you from the terrace to the spa. The food and drink are world-class, but it’s the atmosphere, that rare blend of warmth and sophistication, that sells the experience. I found myself cancelling appointments just to stay a little longer.
And while many Beverly Hills hotels play into the city’s hollow glamour, The Maybourne gently rewrites the script. It’s confident, unpretentious, and genuinely soulful. Proof that great hospitality still matters.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Maybourne Beverly Hills
Address: 225 N Canon Dr, Beverly Hills
Contact: +1 310-860-7800
The writer stayed as a guest of The Maybourne Beverly Hills and explored with Discover Los Angeles.
