Where to stay in Palm Springs: the best areas and hotels

Palm Canyon Drive is the town's main street and its catwalk. Downtown, it is lined with restaurants, bars, galleries and shops, with the mountains looming at the end of every side street. A little further north it becomes the Uptown Design District, where vintage furniture stores and fashion boutiques feed the town's obsession with all things mid-century.

Stay here if you want to leave the car parked. The hotels range from a smart modern hotel with a rooftop pool to all-suite places a few steps from the action, and a storied mid-century resort with the biggest spa in town sits at the Uptown end. The convention centre and casino are within walking distance and the airport is barely a couple of miles away.

Head south along Palm Canyon Drive and the town thins into quiet residential streets, golf courses and a handful of hotels that people cross oceans for. This is the home of the destination pool: mid-century architecture, lush gardens, a cocktail within reach and absolutely nothing you have to do.

The mood runs from bohemian, with a stargazing deck, communal firepits and a roadside diner, to full-blown luxury, with a spa, clay tennis courts and grounds you could get lost in. Couples love it, as do groups of friends. Downtown is a short drive north, and the trailheads of the Indian Canyons are just beyond the last houses.

Rancho Mirage, about 17 km south-east of Palm Springs, has long been where the seriously rich keep a desert house. It is quiet and spread out, more a landscape of country clubs than a town, and its hotels are large resorts with every comfort on site.

Expect spas, several pools apiece, golf on the doorstep and wide views of the San Jacinto Mountains. One resort sits high on a bluff above the valley floor; others spread across acres of courtyards and fairways, with waterslides to keep children busy. You come here to stay put, though Palm Springs and the shops of Palm Desert are each a short drive away.

Palm Desert is the valley's middle ground in every sense. It is home to El Paseo, a mile of boutiques, galleries and restaurants often called the Rodeo Drive of the desert, and to the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, which is one of the best family days out in the region.

The resorts here are enormous and enormously well equipped. The grandest has five pools, eight restaurants and its own golf courses; the villa resorts around it offer kitchens, multiple pools and waterslides, which suits families and longer stays. There are plenty of mid-priced hotels too, close to the Desert Willow golf courses.

Further down the valley, Indian Wells and La Quinta are golf country. The Santa Rosa Mountains glow pink at sunset, the fairways are impossibly green, and each March the Indian Wells Tennis Garden hosts one of the biggest tournaments in the sport.

The hotels match the setting. Indian Wells has full-scale resorts with spas, courses and as many as nine pools. La Quinta has something rarer: a resort of whitewashed Spanish-style casitas among citrus trees and courtyards, which has been a desert retreat since the 1920s. Old Town La Quinta, with its shops, galleries and restaurants, adds a little village life.

Indio sits at the eastern end of the valley and, for two or three weekends each April, at the centre of the music world. The Coachella and Stagecoach festivals take place at the Empire Polo Club here, and rooms anywhere nearby are snapped up months ahead.

Outside festival season it is a straightforward, good-value base, with dependable three-star hotels just off the I-10 and a large casino resort with its own golf course. Joshua Tree National Park is within easy reach for a day among the boulders. It is about 19 miles from Palm Springs airport, so this is not the place for strolling into town.

Across the valley to the north, Desert Hot Springs lives up to its name. The town sits on natural hot mineral springs, and its small hotels are built around them: soaking pools open late into the night, simple rooms, big skies and views back across the desert to the mountains.

It is a world away from the polish of Palm Springs, around 20 minutes off, and that is the appeal. Come for a quiet, restorative couple of days. Some hotels are adults-only boutiques; one resort has eight mineral pools and a children’s pool for families. Do not expect much nightlife beyond a glass of wine in the water.