Hotel Bel Air

Robert De Niro slept there. So did Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant. But the crowd that gathered Thursday morning to buy up a piece of the Hotel Bel-Air, a longtime playground of the rich and famous, was hunting for bargains, not souvenirs. Closed Oct. 1, the Los Angeles landmark is getting a two-year, multimillion-dollar face-lift. Its owners are selling off beds, rugs, lamps and other furnishings. About 100 people lined up outside a Santa Monica storefront where the items are on display, hoping to get a little stardust on the cheap.

If you made a bucket list of the most luxurious hotels and spas to visit in Southern California , the five-star winners of the 2013 Forbes Travel Awards (formerly Mobil) would be a good place to start. The awards for outstanding service and excellence announced Monday this year gave Montage Laguna Beach , its restaurant Studio and its Spa Montage five-star status in an across-the-board sweep. The Craftsman-style hotel with 248 rooms sits on 30 acres atop a bluff overlooking the ocean.

The Hotel Bel-Air, a storied Mission-style landmark frequented by Hollywood's elite, will close for nearly two years for a multimillion-dollar face lift that will put hundreds of staffers out of work. The massive renovation, beginning Oct. 1, will include upgrades for all 91 rooms and suites, the hotel's Champagne Bar, its restaurant and private dining rooms. When it is finished in mid-2011, the hotel will boast 12 new villas and a spa with seven treatment rooms.

All of those shiny new amenities you've seen at your hotel lately - fitness equipment, flat-screen TVs and r edesigned lobbies - are part of a trend across the country. Hotels are expected to spend $5 billion on improvements in 2012, a 33% increase over 2011, said Bjorn Hanson, a dean at New York University's Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management. The spending still falls below the high mark of 2008, when the hotel business was booming and the industry spent $5.5 billion.

The Hotel Bel-Air, the luxurious pink stucco property that fetched $110 million in 1989 in the nation's most expensive per-room hotel acquisition ever, is expected to be sold to the Sultan of Brunei's brother, the hotel's general manager said Friday. But Frank Bowling, also a vice president of the hotel, emphasized that he had gotten no official word that the sale has been completed. An official announcement is expected from the hotel's Japanese owners Thursday, he said.

The Texas oil baron's daughter who bought Los Angeles' luxurious Hotel Bel-Air in 1982 has put the property on the block, and real estate experts said the price could reach astronomical levels. Dallas-based Rosewood Property Co., formed by Caroline Rose Hunt, said it is selling the 92-room hotel--patronized frequently by movie stars and other celebrities--because it believes that the move will "realize an outstanding profit." Rosewood bought the hotel from the Joseph H.

A Japanese company is seeking to sell the Hotel Bel-Air in West Los Angeles, acquired for more than $100 million in the late 1980s during a Japanese buying spree of well-known American properties, a financier said here Thursday. If the sale goes through, it would mark the latest Japanese retreat from spectacular real estate purchases made in those years. The Japanese tycoon who bought the Pebble Beach golf resort in 1990 was thought to have lost $340 million when he sold it in 1992.

At the Hotel Bel-Air, the swans that swim on the property's brook-fed pond -- and across the jacquard pattern of its custom Italian bed linens -- serve as just one symbol of eternal love. Filled with red-tiled roofs, sun-dappled courtyards, bridges, fountains and lush grounds, this legendary romantic California Mission hideaway employs rosy English Manor and French Country decor to set a stage for which every stay can become Valentine's Day.

The Champagne Bar at the Hotel Bel-Air is dark as a lair. Ice clinks as men and women on caramel-colored leather chairs and forest-green couches imbibe, converse and laugh. A roaring fire blasts light and warmth, which is welcome, despite the heat of a late-summer evening, because the air-conditioned room feels like an ice bucket. Against a wall, under giant paintings of swans, Antonio Castillo de la Gala -- dapper in a dark suit, striped tie and crisp shirt -- surveys his domain from his perch at a Yamaha baby grand piano.

Once the packages went in the box, Tony Marquez's award was in the bag. That's the short version of how a Los Angeles bellhop has won the title of best hotel worker in America. Marquez is bell captain at the Hotel Bel-Air. It's the sprawling hideaway in Stone Canyon north of Westwood where cottage-like suites can go for $3,000 a night -- and celebrity guests can come with a truckload of luggage.

Among the high-tech amenities that many pricey hotels have been adding in the last two years is the in-room iPad. In many hotels, the tablet is loaded with software that lets guests tap the screen to order room service, call for a taxi or request a bill to check out. The Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and the Four Seasons Los Angeles in Beverly Hills both offer in-room iPads. A new study by the company that makes the software for iPads at 53 hotels across the country found that 82% of guests who had access to the tablets used them an average 11 times per stay.

In preparation for the start of demolition this summer of the now-closed 936-room Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the hotel will reopen its doors Thursday for the start of a massive sale of its furniture, plates, towels and television sets, among thousands of items in the building. Everything must go, including the kitchen sinks, which are priced at $350. "But our kitchen sinks are a little bigger than most," said Frank Long, president of International Content Liquidations Inc., the Ohio firm that is running what is expected to be a $2-million liquidation sale starting at 9 a.m. Long lines are expected.

Prepare to dream. The Conde Nast Traveler's 2012 Hot List of new hotels, resorts, spas and restaurants is out -- offering lots of travel fantasy fodder. Editors, not travelers, compiled the list of the best 121 new (which includes the seriously renovated) hotels in the world. These in the West made the cut: -- Hotel Bel-Air , 701 Stone Canyon Road, L.A., which just emerged from a two-year renovation. Its Prairie spa also won a best-spa mention. -- Mr. C Beverly Hills, 1224 Beverwil Drive, L.A., scored high marks for its high-rise style.

Location: 701 Stone Canyon Road, Los Angeles, (310) 909-1644, http://www.hotelbelair.com/wolfgang-puck-bel-air Price: Dinner appetizers, $15 to $26; main courses, $28 to $55; four-course tasting menu, $110; six courses, $145. Wine pairings are an additional $75 to $90 per person. Details: Open 7 to 10:30 a.m. daily for breakfast, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday to Saturday for lunch, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for Sunday brunch, 6 to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday for dinner, and 6 to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday for dinner.

With the new Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air, the Austrian chef who, along with Alice Waters, begat California cuisine, has finally achieved a quintessentially Californian restaurant, one with a legendary outdoor terrace in a verdant setting with swans gliding through ponds and enormous old trees overhanging walkways and tumbling streams. And what a difference: For the first time in recent memory, the historic hotel has a serious restaurant with some seriously good food. Puck may no longer be the youngest kid on the block, but he's tough and smart and, more important, he knows how to make food that is genuinely delicious.

For nearly half a century, the UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden in Bel-Air has served as a serene stopover for visitors from locations as varied as Newhall, Nashville and the Netherlands. But the decision by UCLA to sell the steep hillside property and an adjoining house to raise money for endowments and professorships has the garden world in an un-Zen-like uproar. The Garden Conservancy, an organization based in New York and San Francisco, has lambasted the university's transfer to the Fowler Museum of a five-tiered stone pagoda and other garden objects and has urged the public to contact UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

With the new Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air, the Austrian chef who, along with Alice Waters, begat California cuisine, has finally achieved a quintessentially Californian restaurant, one with a legendary outdoor terrace in a verdant setting with swans gliding through ponds and enormous old trees overhanging walkways and tumbling streams. And what a difference: For the first time in recent memory, the historic hotel has a serious restaurant with some seriously good food. Puck may no longer be the youngest kid on the block, but he's tough and smart and, more important, he knows how to make food that is genuinely delicious.

Closed for a two-year renovation, the luxury hideaway Hotel Bel-Air is planning to reopen in October with more rooms, amenities and broader food and beverage operations, all controlled by the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group. Plus of course, higher room rates. The storied Los Angeles hotel had originally been expected to reopen in July . It will make its debut with 103 guest rooms, including 12 new canyon-view rooms designed by Montreal’s Alexandra Champalimaud.   In addition, a new building features a fitness studio, loft-style guest rooms and a 4,134-square-foot Spa by La Prairie.

After a two-year renovation, the iconic Hotel Bel-Air in West Los Angeles reopened to a spirited protest by about 300 activists and former union workers who were laid off when construction began in 2009 and were never rehired. As guests arrived, they were greeted by the demonstration Friday afternoon organized by Unite Here Local 11, whose leaders contended the hotel used the multimillion-dollar upgrade to force union workers out. The union activists were joined by protesters from Occupy L.A., who rode two buses from downtown Los Angeles, where they have been demonstrating against corporate greed.

The 103-room Hotel Bel-Air reopens its doors Friday after a two-year redesign .  The inn blends its former Spanish Colonial architecture with elegant new themes. Its signature oval swimming pool and swans remain . . . .    Prime polar bear viewing season is beginning in Churchill, Canada, where the animals gather to cross Hudson Bay in their fall search for food . . . . As of this weekend, three Colorado ski resorts will be open : Arapahoe Basin, Loveland and Wolf Creek.