Every city would be lucky to have a Pali hotel. If things continue like they are, every city might have the chance. The California-born group is growing fast.
“I put in the time and energy to understand how every hotel will add value to each neighborhood we inhabit.”
That was Palisociety founder Avi Brosh when we spoke with him in 2020, right after Pali completed an expansion from three hotels to nine. “Every piece of furniture, every flooring detail, every wallpaper pattern has to go through me,” he insisted then. When you looked at the remarkable consistency of design at Pali properties, and how well they’d incorporated their local surroundings, it was easy to believe.
Having a great team around you, as Brosh does, is crucial. Having a singular vision, as Brosh does, might be even more important. Especially when your plans include continued ambitious expansion, as his did.
How could Pali keep up the pace without its hands-on owner losing his head? Four years on, we’re relieved to see that they’ve kept up just fine and that, yes, Brosh has finally accepted a little help from his friends. Four preexisting hotels from the Arrive group — in Austin, Palm Springs, Memphis, and Wilmington — have joined the Pali society, bringing an almost identical hyper-local sensibility. It’s a hand-in-glove fit for Brosh, and adds a certain tech-friendly youthfulness to the portfolio.
Meanwhile, they’ve also reincarnated their very first hotel as the Palihouse West Hollywood, launched new hotels in San Diego, Hollywood, Portland, and Tampa, and created yet another brand with the Pali name.
In Le Petit Pali, Brosh presents his take on the more intimate bed and breakfast — revamping small inns in favorite California locales, starting with Carmel-by-the-Sea, and soon Brentwood, Laguna, and St. Helena. With two more Arrives on the way, in Albuquerque and New Orleans, Pali is showing no signs of slowing down.
The goal of everything, Brosh once told us, is to be the hotel that locals recommend to their friends visiting town. If the below list of recent openings is any indication, they wont stop until they have friends in every city in America.
Palihouse West Hollywood
West Hollywood, CA
The very first Palisociety hotel was the Palihouse Holloway, a boutique-chic extended-stay concept named for its West Hollywood address. A decade and a half and more than a few Palisociety openings later, the brand has revisited its roots, with what’s less a simple renovation and more a total replacement of its original hotel: the 95-room Palihouse West Hollywood.
Palihotel San Diego
San Diego, CA
The original Hotel St. James sign still stands atop this 1912 Victorian-style hotel building in San Diego’s nightlife-focused Gaslamp Quarter. Today, though, the old St. James is now Palihotel San Diego. It’s a 122-room boutique that aims to preserve the character of its setting, from the marble staircase and the vintage elevators to the Victorian architectural details in the rooms.
Palihouse Hyde Park Village
Tampa, FL
Palisociety’s colorful, eclectic, European-influenced style travels remarkably well; while Palihouse Hyde Park Village bears an obvious family resemblance to the other hotels of the same name, it looks perfectly at home on the Gulf Coast of Florida, just across the river from downtown Tampa, in an open-air mixed-use development with shops, restaurants, and now, a remarkably stylish boutique hotel.
Palihotel Hollywood
Los Angeles, California
There’s no mistaking the Palihotels aesthetic, marked as it is by a distinctive palette of soft colors and an eclectic design sense that’s equally reminiscent of modern boutique hotels and classic European inns. This is true even when the hotel in question is a renovation of a 1958 motel, which is what the Palihotel Hollywood is — now a 76-room boutique hotel right on Sunset Boulevard, complete with a spa, a courtyard swimming pool, and a poolside restaurant and bar.
Le Petit Pali at 8th Ave
Carmel, California
It shares the certain unpretentious, vintage-inspired warmth of all the Palisociety hotels, but Le Petit Pali at 8th Ave is a 24-room inn that’s closer in its scale and its concept to a seaside bed-and-breakfast than an urban boutique hotel. It occupies a charming and thoroughly Californian Craftsman-style building, which is aesthetically a perfect match for Palisociety’s eclectic interiors.
Le Petit Pali at Ocean Ave
Carmel, California
One of a pair with Le Petit Pali at 8th Avenue, this one, at 34 rooms, is similarly intimate, and a fine match for the relatively tranquil atmosphere of this classic California coastal town. Some rooms and suites come with gas fireplaces, and all of them freely combine vintage- and antique-inspired furniture and artworks with unobtrusively modern boutique-hotel comforts.
Hotel Grand Stark
Portland, Oregon
In one of Portland’s most up-and-coming corners is a hotel that puts its guests right in the thick of it. The Grand Stark is named for the intersection on which it stands, but it’s unmistakably Pali, with rooms decorated in a style that’s identifiably Northwestern but without any forest kitsch, and with public spaces that recall the days of the Grand Stark’s founding more than a century ago.
ARRIVE Austin
Austin, Texas
The east side of Austin has long been the city’s less polished, more creative side, and it still is. Though it’d be a stretch to call Arrive Austin unpolished, its industrial-inspired interiors and its sociable, communal atmosphere remain true to the spirit of the neighborhood. “Industrial-inspired” doesn’t mean cold either — in true Pali fashion the concrete surfaces are warmed by blond wood, graphic wallpaper, and colorful artworks.
ARRIVE Palm Springs
Palm Springs, California
The architecture at Arrive Palm Springs is distinctive, and traces its heritage to the local style. Interiors feature some retro-inspired elements as well, from Victorian-style wallpaper and curvaceous leather armchairs to modernist chairs, desks, and lamps. But this is no throwback. This is pure 21st-century Palm Springs — and like any Pali production, it all adds up to a vibe that’s warm and appealingly eclectic.
ARRIVE Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee
Palisociety’s Arrive hotels are all different, carefully tailored to their settings in some of America’s most unique neighborhoods. But they share plenty as well: all are vibrant and eclectic in their design sense, and all include dining and drinking venues that connect them to the local flavors and traditions. Arrive Memphis begins with a lovely old industrial building on South Main, in the city’s Arts District, close to Beale Street and Downtown Memphis.
ARRIVE Wilmington
Wilmington, North Carolina
Arrive Wilmington is painstakingly tailored to its setting, a marriage of three historic structures in the waterfront district, and combines a bit of rough-edged post-industrial patina with genteel Southern charm — in typical Palisociety style it’s decorated with whimsical patterned wallpaper and an eclectic array of furnishings, including antiques, mid-century modern pieces, and contemporary additions.
Mitchell Friedman is the a hotel editor for Tablet and Michelin Guide. He’s been with Tablet since 2018, and wants you to subscribe to our newsletter.