SLS Hotel, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Beverly Hills

Extremely disappointing experience for a supposed 5-star hotel.

We are paying around $500 per night, and one of the main reasons for choosing this hotel was to enjoy the pool and the facilities you expect from a property at this level.

We arrived at the pool around 1 PM and were told there were no loungers available. The ridiculous part? There were around 10 EMPTY loungers sitting there with nobody using them, but apparently they were all “reserved,” so actual hotel guests were simply denied access to them.

How is it acceptable to pay $500 a night at a 5-star hotel and not even be able to sit by the pool because empty loungers are being held for people who aren’t there?

If the hotel cannot provide enough pool space for its paying guests, then it should either stop accepting so many reservations or stop advertising the pool as an amenity guests can actually enjoy.

For this price and this supposed level of service, this is completely unacceptable. Definitely not the 5-star experience we expected, and a huge disappointment.

SLS is my go-to hotel everytime I come to LA, which is at least monthly to see my daughter who lives in Sherman Oaks. The hospitality is exceptional! Kayla is an amazing waitress who is always gracious to my daughter and I.

Keep up the great work, SLS. It’s noticed.

Have stayed here many times. Such a fun funky vibe! The roof top is a great place to relax. Kayla A. Was my waitress for dinner and breakfast and she was awesome! SLS is always a fun little stay

Kiara Lara was the greatest waiter with us ,she's great, thank you kiara!!!

Room was beautiful and clean.
Had a few tough breakfasts with other servers but on our last two days at breakfast Kiara was amazing. She’s so kind and really went out of her way to help us.

Very good located. Close to everywhere

Thank you so much for an amazing experience to Gizelle the F&B manager who set up everything for us in the beautiful rooftop and our server Kayla who was incredibly attentive to our needs. My friends were mesmerized with the attention and obviously the food and cocktails DELICIOUS! 10/10

Very nice experience. Kayla A at breakfast in particular was fantastic.

This was my 2nd stay here. My first stay was in 2009 (!), 6 months after SLS first opened to great fanfare by businessman Sam Nazarian and his SBE Group. He would later open several other SLS properties, including one in Las Vegas (it's now the Sahara). Although he's no longer with SLS, there are still properties worldwide. This one is now part of Marriott's Luxury Collection. I believe it's the first North American hotel designed by famed French designer Philippe Starck, whose designs are always whimsical, eccentric, out-of-the-ordinary. I believe its uniqueness and iconic status is why very little has been changed regarding the hotel's design, and what has been refreshed has been clearly done with Starck's vision kept in mind. SLS itself was a complete gutting of the former Le Meridien Hotel. I took a look at my photos from my first stay before posting this review; they were taken with a digital camera, before phone cameras had good quality.

The exterior, hotel lobby entry and patio, valet area and ground floor public areas (the dining space now called The Nook, the concierge desks, the foyer for the meeting rooms) are pretty much unaltered, although I don't recall the nearly full-size white horse wearing multiple strands of pearls with a lampshade on its head. The images in the elevators are unchanged.

What is different here is the large entryway and outdoor lounge located behind the valet stand. This area has been closed since the pandemic, open for private events on occasion. Originally it was the entry to the large, highly acclaimed restaurant The Bazaar by Jose Andres, when chef Andres was near the beginning of his illustrious career. I remember this tapas-style restaurant was wildly popular and had several different dining concepts within. One of them was Saam, an exclusive limited-seating tasting-menu spot that later morphed into Somni. Somni reopened post-pandemic, without chef Andres, in another space in West Hollywood and now has 3 Michelin stars, helmed exclusively by chef/owner Aitor Zabala. I'd say the lack of a signature restaurant is one of SLS's shortcomings, especially considering its past. I noticed in my old photos there used to be a Morton's Steakhouse connected to SLS that's also now an empty/unused space.

I would describe SLS's chief design components in 3 words: monkeys, mirrors, chandeliers. They are everywhere. But it's not a case of style over substance; service and amenities overall were good. The hotel overall skews dark. There's virtually no natural light in the ground floor public spaces, and the rooms also lack some light due to the smallish size of the windows. But they are definitely brighter than before.

SLS has at least one interior courtyard; my room faced this way, as do any rooms with terraces or patios. I loved the often humourous lit panels that have the room numbers on them--animals or 17th century people with whimsical features and/or monkeys "graffiti'd" in. The room was pretty spacious. There was evidence of a past mini-bar, now just an empty fridge (which I prefer) and an empty drawer with space for "Saints" and "Sinners". There were 3 types of fancy glassware and in illy coffee machine. The bathroom slate flooring is unchanged, as is the triangular-ish stainless steel sink and back-lit shelves, but the shower is now white marble. Of course the walls were all mirrored. The best part was the A/C could be set below 65 degrees, which was essential during the heatwave that shrouded my stay.

The layout of the rooftop pool deck is the same, although there are no longer huge framed mirrors and paintings surrounding the pools, allowing for more seating. There are 2 pools, one less than a foot deep, the other less than a yard deep. There's quite a variety of lounging types--reservable cabanas, chaises, sofas, "tents", plus tables. There's a restaurant/bar here called LaDiDa that serves lunch and dinner and a weekend brunch they're really trying to promote. I did a lunch here; service was friendly but SLOW--servers cover the entire pool deck.

The ground floor restaurant The Nook serves breakfast and lunch. If you have a breakfast plan like I did, there are quirky rules as to what you can order that aren't related to cost. On 2 separate occasions I ordered 2 cold beverages (instead of one hot and one cold) and a smoothie--they let both errors slide but was warned I was not playing by the rules. There's a automatic 20% service charge for any dining option at SLS, so service can be perfunctory, although always friendly.

Just beyond The Nook is Sushi by Scratch, an omakase tasting menu for 10 people at a time, with 3 seatings nightly and one lunch seating on weekends.

Aside from room service, those are all the SLS dining options. But there are oh-so-many dining options nearby, many walkable. And the hotel does have a house car, actually a large Mercedes bus that can hold at least 8 passengers. It's first come, first served, and only does drop-offs, not pick-ups.

Overall a very nice (and cool) staycation. It was like entering a time-warp into the past, but SLS's style is whimsical as always, but timeless, even ageless?

Thanks to the wonderful employee Kaylee Martha, my experience was enjoyable. I am very grateful to her :)

Very nice hotel overall.

Have been going routinely for business over past 6 months.

Shoutout to server Kiara in the restaurant. Extremely professional and anazing customer service on every visit.

Eddie and Deyvi were the best at helping me retrieve an item after checkout. Highly Recommend.

Jaime at the front desk was the most hospitable individual I’ve ever met and had the pleasure of meeting. Checked up on me, made sure my room was up to my standards. He provided exemplary service

Kayla A in the restaurant was amazing. Service was amazing. Roof top pool - everyone was great. Lived my stay.

I enjoyed my recent stay at SLS. The room was a good size with lovely decor and cozy bedding. The food was fantastic both on the rooftop at the pool and breakfast every morning. Shout out to Kayla A. who happened to be my server on two different occasions. She remembered specifically things I liked and always had a warm and welcoming presence. Nothing was ever too much of an ask and I’d come back to specifically dine in her section.

We had such a great time dining on the rooftop at sunset on a Saturday. Sebastian took such great care of us. Will definitely return.

Location
Service
Breakfast was very good

The location
The breakfast
The service

I left an item in the Garden Terrace room and security was wonderful to deal with!! Eddy called back shortly after receiving my message with the good news that they found my sweater and patiently walked me through the steps for the hotel to ship the item back to me. Beautiful hotel with friendly, helpful and lovely staff!! Isabelle