Viceroy Palm Springs, Palm Springs, United States

The only objects that belie the luxury of the hotel’s nondescript exterior walls are a bevy of ‘guest-only’ parking notices and the chic new lobby lamps quite visible from the street to passers-by. It is late afternoon, and the shadows cast by the towering San Jacinto Mountains skirt across the basin at a snail’s pace. I’ve just weathered two and a half hours of seemingly endless freeway pavement between Los Angeles and my destination, Palm Springs, and have only one desire: to dive into the Viceroy's natural spring waters before the shadows reach the swimming pool.

For anyone who lives in the Western half of the United States, Palm Springs is much more an institution than mere resort destination. This is because the arid desert oasis has long been a vacation haven for Hollywood icons. Situated in the arid Coachella Valley some two and a half hours southeast of LA, it has a venerable history of respecting the privacy of film stars and media moguls from the late 1920s onward. The renaissance of retro motels and motor inns such as the Viceroy is a recent phenomenon; they are in fact an anomaly amid the area’s many large-scale resorts that accommodate septugarian golfers and visiting retirees.

The Viceroy, however, is one of a number of iconic Palm Springs motels built between the 1930s and 1950s that has recently revamped and rejigged for the discerning tastes of LA industry players and media types. Yet while there are a number of these small motels and motor inns scattered about the city, the Viceroy is the first of these ‘retro’s’ to move beyond simple period style furnishings to unabashedly target the LA crowd with a haute design restaurant, a 24-hour fitness center, Frette linens and bathrobes and state-of-the-art in-room entertainment.

Built in 1933, the Viceroy is today a mélange comprising 74 rooms, studios and diminutive poolside villas clad in a modern Hollywood Regency jacket by designer Kelly Wearstler. In the place of modern Hollywood Regency, one should read circa 1970s. In fact, the hotel is a must for 1970s aficionados, and anyone born between 1965 and 1975 and raised in the sunny tract homed paradises of that era will undoubtedly recognize the doorknobs and light switches and shag carpets, the built-in bathtubs and mirrored coffee tables. It was all so very close to home it even spurred a tiny bit of nostalgia for a 1970s youth I barely remember. But I recovered gracefully, and by the time I squeezed into my swim trunks and hit the pool I was completely at home with my surroundings.

As I walked to my villa, the groovy lounge music playing in the minimalist new lobby faded into courtyard silence and the sound of late afternoon desert breezes. I passed lounge chairs decorated with yellow towels and glossy red apples, outdoor massage pavilions covered in heat-deterring canvas, cypress and citrus trees with lemons lying about the manicured lawns. There were rectilinear potted plans, palms trees so erect they disappeared high up in the sun’s glare, topiaries, villas with shingled roofs and, at the poolside, a general air of oblivion. The few people still sunning themselves by the pool were too involved in their books and whispered conversations to notice my arrival.

Not surprisingly, the interior of my room coincided with the starkness of the stringently kept grounds: white tiles and glossy cabinets with mirror elements all around. Save for the poetic floral arrangement (actually, a bunch of branches) and splashes of lemon yellow on the couch cushions and living room chair, the Viceroy is a distinctly black and white affair, with all carpets, wallpaper and upholstery, bed linen and fixtures adhering to the strict color code. In an urban hotel this could be quite constricting, but in Palm Springs it exerted a welcomed coolness (temperatures often measure in the 100s) and was countered by the aquamarine swimming pool and vast blue desert sky.

For the rest, my bungalow offered all the amenities associated with its name; I had a private dining room, kitchen, bathroom and living room, all decisively diminutive but perfect for two. The private patio with three couches and a small round top table could easily accommodate a soiree for 12. My only real complaint is that the hedges were not higher to allow for more natural sunbathing. As it was, most of the guests at the Viceroy, a mixture of young professionals and discerning strays who adapt themselves accordingly, minded their own business; but the hedge was not high enough to deter the age-old human predilection for peeping. In-room DVD players and surround sound television were nice but not entirely necessary with an inviting outdoor patio. During one weak moment, the living room fireplace had me longing for a cold dessert night, if only to cuddle on the white shag carpet in its glow.

Like many of Palm Springs motels, the Viceroy’s nondescript exterior is a Potemkin façade that hides the low-key luxury inside. A high wall circumvents the grounds and guarantees both seclusion and silence. For even more seclusion and silence, the hotel has created an adults-only section, which despite its name exudes nothing sinister. A simple gate neatly separates the chirpy rancor of pubescent cannonballs and suburban joshing from the more sophisticated cigarette smoking and cocktail drinking travails of thirty-somethings.

The Viceroy is a sister hotel to the hip four-star hotel Viceroy in Santa Monica, both owned by the ambitious and young Kor Hotel Group, and it shows. The brand-new Citron restaurant and bar features a similar glossy sheen to its surfaces as the Santa Monica counterpart. A Casablanca whiteness characterizes both, and each has quixotic plaster canine sculptures standing at attention along the pathways. It is a suaveness that sometimes deviates into just plain quirkiness, but in the Viceroy’s case is easily forgivable thanks to the gated seclusion and dessert silence; for most of my stay I heard only four distinct noises: the muffled chatter of the Mexican groundskeepers, the trickling of a far-off fountain, the shuffle of flip-flops across the concrete pavement and the splash of pool water.

As a whole, the Viceroy’s clientele comprises mostly thirtysomething LA types looking for a few days of downtime lassitude. To make the most of their stay, they keep mostly to themselves, avoiding group hikes and horseback riding and particularly lunchtime chatter. The new lobby, cocktail bar and low-key restaurant mean that it is possible to check in for the weekend without ever leaving the premises. The service is not Four Seasons, but neither is the price. If it’s three-star Michelin cuisine you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Discerning souls have known about the Viceroy since its reopening under Kor in 2001 but the recent restaurant/bar and especially spa additions mean booking a room will become much more difficult as word spreads. Hidden in the back of the adult-section, the spa boasts both indoor and outdoor massage pavilions, facials, comprehensive yoga courses and a large menu of auxiliary services, including the usual gambit of facials, pedicures and waxing. More in line with the hotel’s ambitions is the $450 (US), 5-hour Heaven on Earth package or, amusingly (or not), Barry’s Bootcamp Weekend, which according to the brochure ‘is the most comprehensive cardio and strength workout in the USA in just 60 minutes.’ For more fragile souls, there are desert hikes along the San Andreas fault, horseback riding and, of course, a golf course around every corner.

More than anything else, the Viceroy is a resort destination. Though situated far enough away from the city’s main throughway, Palm Canyon Drive, to avoid the noise, it is within walking distance to its many restaurants and shops. Because the staff is not intrusive, because the newspaper is delivered to your doorstep each morning and because the bright orange dessert blossoms of my patio and the comprehensive new spa offer the right type of entertainment for my vacation needs, there’s really no reason to venture beyond the Viceroy's walls. Which in a way it too bad, because Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley as a whole have a lot to offer.