The Desert Sun offered a peak Thursday into the new Hotel Paseo, a new the three-story boutique hotel set to open in January. The 150 room property will feature a very El Paseo-type restaurant, a spa, and, for some reason, an Airstream you can stay in instead of an actual hotel room. Rooms can be booked now for $200 to $600 a night – but, will anyone actually want to stay there?
While a new hotel in Palm Desert is certainly exciting for the city, the location offers some unique challenges. Most people know that El Paseo is not exactly a happening place (despite now having balloons) and those who are unaware and head out to the Palm Desert street, quickly find that it’s a damn ghost town by 7 pm.
For those who simply want to hole up in their room at Hotel Paseo, this isn’t a problem. But what about those who don’t? What are they going to do? What is around Hotel Paseo for them to do? Where are they going to go?
And for those who are not interested in night life, for a couple of hundred bucks a night, you could rent an entire house in South Palm Desert. Why share a community pool when you can relax in your own private one? I just checked Airbnb and there are some seriously nice places you can stay at in January for the same price in the same area.
For people that do want to stay at a resort, there is a ton of competition for the luxury resort crowd nearby in Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage, and, let’s face it, it’s going to be pretty tough to compete with the Desert Springs Marriott who has been riding the 30 years of amazing publicity from Zack, Kelly, AC, and Screech’s epic vacation there.
I mean, I don’t know – maybe there are a ton of huge Tommy Bahama fans that are just dying to stay next door to the franchise’s location in Palm Desert or maybe Hotel Paseo will be the thing that starts the transition of El Paseo to being something more than just the most boring shopping district in the country.
Guess we will find out soon enough.
