Les Cactus Hotel

Les Cactus Hotel owes its name to a 1967 French rock song with a surprisingly political afterlife. Jacques Dutronc’s “Les Cactus” sold more than 400,000 copies and climbed to number four on the French charts, but its strangest legacy came when Prime Minister Georges Pompidou quoted it in the Assemblée Nationale to jab at a critic, making front-page news. More than fifty years later, that cheeky bit of French pop history found a new home in the California desert.

The property itself dates to the 1930s and ’40s, when its buildings were constructed in phases. After a six-month renovation, it reopened in February 2020 under L.A.-based hotelier Matthew Kurtz, working with Palm Springs hoteliers Richard Crisman and Jeff Brock.

Today, the 27-room retreat sits in the Warm Sands neighborhood, its bungalow-style rooms gathered around a pool beneath the San Jacinto Mountains. Vintage furnishings mingle with contemporary pieces, while a hammock garden, rooftop deck, and daily continental breakfast encourage a particularly Palm Springs approach to productivity: very little of it. And yes, there are croissants. The French connection, after all, had to go somewhere.