San Luis Obispo, United States

Hotel San Luis Obispo

Price per night from$396.12

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD396.12), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Mission accomplished

Setting

Delightfully downtown

Between the Californian hills and the Pacific Ocean sits Hotel San Luis Obispo, its finessed modernity in striking contrast to its steeped-in-history setting. Yet this welcome surprise has slotted in beautifully to its former Chinatown address. High-ceilinged, airy rooms and suites each come with a private terrace or balcony, and white-walled interiors are brightened with colourful furnishings and commissioned artworks rooted in the hotel’s local heritage. The art of relaxation can be fine-tuned at the courtyard pool and spa. And there are further sensory pleasures to savour in the polished pair of restaurants.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A $25 dining credit, a $25 spa credit and a welcome bottle of Edna Valley wine; GoldSmiths will receive a $50 spa credit

Facilities

Photos Hotel San Luis Obispo facilities

Need to know

Rooms

78, including six suites.

Check–Out

Noon. Earliest check-in, 3pm. Both are flexible, subject to availability.

More details

Rates are room only and exclude taxes.

Also

There’s no need to waste a day in SLO – not when the hotel’s concierge can make bookings and suggest entire itineraries to suit your tastes.

At the hotel

Spa, fitness centre, rooftop bocce court, concierge, valet parking. In rooms: free WiFi, minibar, free refillable carafes of water, Nespresso coffee machine, tea-making kit, and Sol Spa bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Morro Suites get top billing, with a guaranteed bath tub and a separate living area, as well as an impressive terrace – although the generous proportions of Tolosa Studios also have a place in our heart…

Poolside

The 50-feet-long heated pool and separate Jacuzzi are in a fenced-off section of the courtyard, where you can order drinks and snacks to your wooden lounger and side table.

Spa

Beside the pool, Sol Spa is a house-plant-dotted retreat in shades of coffee and cream. It has indoor and outdoor lounges, a meditation room and salt sauna. Concoct your own blend of fresh ingredients at the Scrub Bar, and choose from a menu of massages and facials using the spa’s own product range. Please note, you’ll be charged for spa treatments cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice.

Packing tips

Bring laid-back layers for beach days and hill trails, as well as kit you can ride a bike in, plus an option or two for evening glamour.

Also

There are wheelchair-accessible options in the Mission Double Queen, Paseo King and Morro Suite category.

Pet‐friendly

Up to two dogs a room can stay for $50 a night each. The hotel provides a bed, bowl and treats. See more pet-friendly hotels in San Luis Obispo.

Children

All ages are welcome and cots and highchairs are provided. There are books, games and puzzles to borrow. The heated pool has a shallow end and is fenced off from the courtyard. Both restaurants are happy to adapt dishes to suit little Smiths.

Sustainability efforts

The hotel was built with some recycled and eco-friendly materials, including upcycled brick. Light bulbs are planet-friendly and rooms have high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows to maximise natural light. Bath products are eco-friendly and refillable. Guests are given reusable water carafes, with filling stations for still and sparkling on every floor. There are free bicycles to borrow, and walking – around town and on local hill trails – is encouraged.

Food and Drink

Photos Hotel San Luis Obispo food and drink

Top Table

At Piadina, plump for a cosy booth with banquettes upholstered in colourful Maharam textiles by Hella Jongerius. At Ox + Anchor, peripheral tables, with leather banquettes wall-side, feel more intimate than those that are chair-only, front and centre.

Dress Code

Stay casual for Piadina, but throw on something a little glitzy for Ox + Anchor.

Hotel restaurant

Grilled meats and locally sourced, seasonal fare come together at modern steakhouse Ox + Anchor, under executive chef Ryan Fancher (formerly at Auberge de Soleil, then French Laundry and Per Se). This evenings-only, low-lit den of tub chairs and wooden tables, with wine stacked around the walls, serves irresistible surf and turf and, of course, Californian wines. Italian-Californian restaurant Piadina, also under Fancher, is open for breakfast and lunch. Its bright and light dining room, furnished with quirky art, pale wood and white walls, is the place to tuck into incredible cooked breakfasts, showstopper salads and towering Kobe burgers alongside perfectly judged pizzas and pasta.

Hotel bar

The hotel has two bars – go high or go low… The rooftop High Bar is lushly planted for artily arranged cocktails and small plates amid the greenery. This is also where you’ll find the bocce court, should you fancy a game of Roman bowls. The Slow Bar is a glamorous mink-and-mushroom-hued lounge that pays homage to a restaurant from SLO’s historic Chinatown. Linger over apéritifs taken either on high stalls at the bar or on its low-slung sofas and armchairs.

Last orders

Ox + Anchor is open from 5pm until 9pm (10pm at weekends). Piadina is open for breakfast (7am to 10am), lunch (11am to 3pm) and dinner (5pm to 9pm); Sunday brunch is served 10.30am–3pm.

Room service

Anything from the Californian-Italian menu at Piadina can be ordered to your room, 24 hours a day.

Location

Photos Hotel San Luis Obispo location
Address
Hotel San Luis Obispo
877 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo
93401
United States

A coastal Californian town between Los Angeles and San Francisco, San Luis Obispo is just a few minutes’ drive off the Pacific Coast Highway.

Planes

Regional flights from Los Angeles, San Francisco and a handful of other US cities land at San Luis Obispo airport, a 10-minute drive from the hotel. It takes three hours and 40 minutes to drive to the hotel from LAX international airport.

Trains

A mile from the hotel, San Luis Obispo’s rail station has direct Amtrak trains to Los Angeles, San Francisco and San José.

Automobiles

Roadtrippers taking the spectacular, oceanside Highway 1 can enjoy a similarly splendid stopover here – the hotel is a few minutes’ drive downtown. There’s valet parking for $17 a day.

Worth getting out of bed for

San Luis Obispo offers an adventure of two halves. Downtown excels in urban pleasures, shopping, markets, museums and theatres. The Californian coast beckons with surf-ready beaches, quieter, sandy bays, picturesque piers and super-fresh seafood.

Held every Thursday evening, Downtown Slo Farmers’ Market is as much about locals gathering for live-music-accompanied street food as it is about shopping for regional produce. For a broad stretch of beaches offering a variety of conditions, try surfing at Morro Bay, where there are a couple of surf shops offering kit to rent and lessons to ease in beginners. A sheltered spot that’s better for swimming, Avila Beach’s golden sands are edged with cafés and shops, and the boardwalk pier has brilliant back-to-shore views. Paso Robles and Edna Valley are the nearest wine-growing areas: to taste the fruits of the latter, head to the old bell-topped schoolhouse turned Tasting Room on Orcutt Road, where you can taste Niven family wines. You’ll need to book at Paso Robles’ L’Aventure Winery, for either a tasting-room session or more in-depth tour. The Sunset Drive-In is a Grease-style retro movie theatre: pack popcorn and a picnic, and watch a current release from the comfort of your car.  What started as a 12-room motel in the late 1950s is now a titanic temple to kitsch, visited by daytrippers as well as guests. Madonna Inn is a visual feast of gaudy colour, ornate wood-carving, marble staircases and not-a-little gilt.

 

Local restaurants

Unassuming-looking Giovanni’s is a fish market and galley at Morro Bay where you won’t want to miss the oysters – simply shucked or barbecued. Sunday brunch at linen-draped tables on the terrace at Novo is a three-course affair of seafood starters, egg-centric mains and divine desserts that warrants its own cocktail menu. The tables and chairs may be fixed to the floor at beach café Splash at Pismo Beach, but taste the clam chowder for lunch and all is forgiven. For a laid-back supper, head to Firestone Grill and try SLO speciality, tri-tip, which is a sirloin cut that gets a delicious crust when grilled and is tastier than it sounds. And there’s no need to head far for a special occasion, when modern steakhouse Ox + Anchor at the hotel is SLO’s swankiest supper option.

Local bars

Table lamps atop gleaming counters, bare-brick walls and made-for-lingering armchairs set the scene at Nightcap at Granada Hotel & Bistro, where the cocktail list is long and last orders not till 11pm (midnight at weekends).

Reviews

Photos Hotel San Luis Obispo reviews
Claire Nelson

Anonymous review

By Claire Nelson, Determined adventurer

It’s pretty easy to be happy in California. Travelling up the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the sun is shining, the winter sky is a flawless blue, and the road curves alongside the ocean as it crashes into dramatic cliff edges… I actually start whistling. So I’m not surprised to learn that what is touted as the happiest place in America is California’s San Luis Obispo. A little light digging reveals much of this has to do with the very walkable, pedestrianised town, its quaint boutiques, and independent cafés and restaurants (there has been a ban on drive-through restaurants here since the 1980s). Other factors ostensibly include the county’s dramatic coastline and abundance of wineries.

These things are all very well, but I’m cynical. It’s difficult to take these kinds of rankings seriously, because well… it’s philosophical: what is happiness, anyway, and how do we measure it? It’s subjective. It’s a mood. But nevertheless, I’m curious whether I’ll get a sense of this localised positivity when I visit. 

I’m staying at the Hotel San Luis Obispo, and its logo is a smiley face, so things are looking promising. And my face is absolutely a smiley one when I enter my room. The Paseo King is so light and spacious, and the design features are a delight: satisfyingly textural Nanimarquina rugs and cushions in pleasing hues, with soft, silken linens. There are slatted sliding doors to the balcony, from which I have views across the swimming pool, the town’s pedestrianised centre, and out to the mountains beyond. This is what makes me happy: when style and comfort come together. 

Every design choice seems useful (practical, low-level geekery also pleases me): I love the ingenious hideaway plug sockets that pop up when pressed, and (I thought this was a brilliant touch) a bedside multi-cable, featuring any kind of charger you might have forgotten to pack. As someone who is forever misplacing cables when I’m on the road, I felt seen. I felt cared for. This room was a warm hug.

And listen, I know some people find happiness in a well-stocked minibar but I’d rather a mini fridge not be stocked with unnecessary, overpriced temptations. At this hotel, it’s just sleek glass bottles of filtered water that can be refilled at a water station in the hallway. (If you want something stronger, there’s a very good bar downstairs.) This said, there are in-room snacks, which are complimentary, and replenished on request… which might be too generous because the rosemary sea-salt shortbread I have in my room is spectacularly bingeable. (This is what makes me happy: free snacks.)

Of course, a hotel can only control the conditions within. As if to test my good mood, the weather suddenly turned from blue skies to un-Californian torrential rain. Gone is my plan to borrow one of the hotel’s cool Fuji bikes to explore San Luis Obispo’s traffic-scant streets. But no matter. The hotel’s Sol Spa is the nearest thing to sunshine you can get, and immediately accessible through the cactus garden in the rear courtyard. This Zen retreat allows me to warm my cold cynical heart in the sauna before having an incredible facial from Desiree, who brings back to life my tired, traveller’s complexion through a series of decadent skin treatments tailored to my needs. I leave feeling as refreshed and rejuvenated from head to toe as if I’ve had a massage.

To preserve my loosened condition, I freshen up and head down to the hotel bar for a cocktail, watching people arriving for reservations, shaking the rain off their umbrellas. The two restaurants here are destinations in their own right: I feel lucky that I have no need to leave the hotel.

Ox + Anchor is a slick, modern steakhouse people go out of their way to book into, though I’m feeling casual and opt for the more low-key Piadina, which served farm-fresh fare with an Italian spin and wines from California’s central coast. The waitress points out that Piadina’s menu still includes the same steaks from Ox + Anchor, which feels like a wonderful little cheat I can’t possibly turn down. (This is what makes me happy: a perfectly cooked steak.) It’s worth noting portions are generous: the kale caesar salad I order as a side dish is so enormous I have to have most of it boxed up for the next day’s lunch. Back in my room I spend a bit of time playing with the multiple lighting options; a bit fumbly at first, but once I figure it out, I like that I can literally control the mood. How apt. 

While I never did get to delve into the joys of San Luis Obispo, and I’m still no clearer what makes it the happiest place in America… in regards to Hotel San Luis Obispo I can say – subjectively at least – that I was happy here.

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Price per night from $396.12