An oasis of respite that courted the A-list of Golden Age Hollywood, the iconic La Quinta Resort & Club offers meeting configurations that can cater to most any group dimension.
The storied resort’s genesis in 1926, in fact, plays a key role in its ability to be flexible, as it served Tinseltown stars and starlets who were bound by a contract clause that they needed to be within two hours from Hollywood—even on vacation—with La Quinta’s Palm Springs-area location coming in just under the wire.
The need for screen stars of the day to have a place to unwind far from the glare of the Klieg lights resulted in Walter H. Morgan purchasing some 1,400 acres from the Coachella Valley’s Cauhuilla tribe to construct a hacienda-style hotel. La Quinta has since grown to include 20 casitas and 796 guest rooms and villas, laid out with an eye toward seclusion that creates small community “quadrants” around its 41 swimming pools.
This same seductive seclusion was a beacon for movie business movers and shakers such as Frank Capra, who wrote the Academy Award-winning movie It Happened One Night in a casita that still contains his typewriter, and returned to pen such classics as Mt. Deeds Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. On the other side of the camera, luminaries such as Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Katherine Hepburn and Shirley Temple have visited, and Greta Garbo event maintained a residence on the property.
“Those types of people who come in don’t have to come through a main lobby; they can go right to their rooms,” says Bob Buttaro, director of marketing and communications for the property, referring to the current crop of La Quinta A-listers. “It’s on 45 acres, so it lends itself to that intimacy when it’s full, and that’s coincidentally what groups like as well. If it’s a small group they can take a quadrant and have their own set of pools.
“That’s why a lot of groups choose us—the layout of the property, the history,” Buttaro continues. “We have pathways, not hallways, here, and we can accommodate groups in a variety of locations. We have the traditional ballrooms, but groups choose [La Quinta] because of the history and flexibility of locations that are available to them.”
Even More Options
La Quinta Resort & Club features a total of 66,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space, and can cater a maximum of 1,800 guests, with its largest ballrooms measuring 17,000 and 16,000 square feet.
Besides the ample meeting space options, groups can choose from a unique range of guest rooms, from vintage-style casitas to spa villas with full suites and traditional suites. The layout of La Quinta Resort & Club also finds many of these room types intermingled with each other.
According to Buttaro, high season is from October through May, with shoulder season stretching from June to September.
Outside of the guest room choices, La Quinta Resort & Club also offers two on-property golf courses and another seven nearby, including PGA West. Five of the courses are available to guests and four are private. The designers of the courses are a veritable Who’s Who of the golf world: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Pete Dye, Greg Norman and Tom Weiskopf.
Buttaro says flexibility also comes into play with groups that want to include golf outings, ranging from instruction at its on-property Jim McClean Golf School to a full-scale “turnkey” tournament. La Quinta Resort & Club is also famous for its tennis, with 23 immaculately maintained courts.
Off-site excursion options include hot-air ballooning, polo matches (the Empire Polo Club is located nearby), jeep tours and hiking and biking in the Santa Rosa Mountains. And, of course, the climate pretty much always cooperates, with only five to 10 days a year bringing rain.
Dining is another highlight at La Quinta Resort & Club, which offers five restaurants, including Adobe Grill, specializing in Oaxacan cuisine; Twenty 6, a casual, all-day venue that recently underwent a menu renovation; and its signature Morgan’s in the Desert, led by farm-to-table pioneer Jimmy Schmidt. Buttaro adds that the resort’s executive chefs are always eager to custom-design F&B programs for groups.
And it’s just that type of ability to customize that has made the property, part of Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, feel like a home away from home for both the Hollywood elite and all manner of meeting groups.
“It really is like a village here with the number of amenities we offer,” Buttaro says. “It feels more residential than like a hotel.”
