Palm Springs Lodging

A Bit About Palm Springs

The greater Palm Springs area includes a string of towns that stretch along CA Hwy 111, forming an almost continuous string of habitation, It can take over half an hour to drive from one end to the other, which can be inconvenient if you choose a hotel at one end of town and all your planned activities are at the other.

Some online reservation services will include all of them when you search for Palm Springs hotels, but at others, you may have to search by the individual town names. Roughly from north to south, they are: Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Thousand Palms, Indian Wells, Bermuda Dunes, La Quinta and Indio. Also nearby, across I-10 is Desert Hot Springs where you'll find a large number of hotels and hot springs spas.

You'll need more than just a place to sleep while you're in Palm Springs. Take a look at things to do in Palm Springs for a weekend getaway.

Finding a Hotel in Palm Springs

Find your Palm Springs lodging like a pro. Use the same process we use to choose our recommended hotels. However, you'll need to know a few things about Palm Springs hotels first:

• Palm Springs has all the big chain hotels, which are mostly what you'll find if you consult the typical hotel reservation websites. However, using those resources alone, you'd never find some of the lovely, smaller renovated hotels and motels that have much more character.

• To find out about these hidden gems, consult the hotel listings at tripadvisor - you'll find they're often the highest-rated places around. While they all have websites, quite a few don't offer online reservations, instead asking you to email, fill out a form or call to find out if they have space available.

• A large percentage of local boutique hotels have only one bed per room. If you need more than that, be sure to confirm that the hotel has rooms that meet your needs.

• Some properties charge extra "resort fees" which are not always easy to find out about and can increase the total cost. Take extra care about this when using sources such as Priceline and Hotwire which don't give you the hotel name in advance.

• Whether or not you're looking for them, Palm Springs has a number of clothing optional lodgings and some that cater to gay clientele.

Once you've picked a few good candidates for your trip, apply all the best tricks to get the lowest possible rate. You may also want to use Kayak.com to compare prices

These links will take you straight to the Tripadvisor reviews and price comparisons for:

• Palm Springs
• Cathedral City
• Palm Desert
• Rancho Mirage
• Thousand Palms
• Indian Wells
• Bermuda Dunes
• Indio

Palm Springs Hotels We Recommend

We haven't stayed in them all, but we have enjoyed stays at the La Quinta Resort, Horizon Hotel and the Andreas Hotel. The links will take you to our reviews.

Finding a B&B in Palm Springs

Bed and breakfast inns can be harder to find without spending countless hours going through their websites. Bedandbreakfast.com gives you a handy place to check on many of them at once.

Palm Springs Vacation Rentals

We love to rent a big house and invite a bunch of friends to join us (or rent a small one to have all to ourselves). You'll find lots of condos and houses to rent in Palm Springs, but finding the right one takes a little more work. Take a look at what's available through Vacation Home Rentals, Home Away and A Better Stay.