The Top 17 Hotels Near The Lark

Spanish Colonial Revival bones dressed up with Moorish tilework and Moroccan touches give this Forbes Four Star hotel a look that's hard to place geographically, which seems to be the point. Three buildings arranged like a small village sit a short walk from East and West Beach, with two restaurants, a rooftop pool, and enough fountains and red-tiled rooflines to make Santa Barbara feel like a foreign country, which Santa Barbara sort of already does.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Spanish Colonial Revival bones on the outside, near-monastic calm on the inside. This boutique hotel on State Street sits within walking distance of the beach, and its interiors lean hard into warm organic textures and clean lines while the building around them quietly dates itself. Two in-house bars, Dawn and Dusk, handle coffee and oysters respectively, which covers most of the hours you'd actually need covering.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The rooftop pool sits above a city that takes its Spanish Colonial architecture very seriously, which is partly why it's funny that this boutique hotel is named for the Canary Islands rather than any particular shade of yellow. It's a genuine escape in a town that, for all its mountains, coastline, and proximity to Central Coast wine country, took a while to get a place like this. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. 50 Best 2025 · Most Admired Hotel Group Award

Pink open-air cars shuttle guests around the 16 acres here, which tells you something about the register: this is a Forbes Five Star, Michelin two-key oceanfront resort that takes relaxation seriously and has the budget to prove it. Art Deco touches, a Sense spa, two pools, and private bungalows set among English-garden landscaping, all facing a south-coast beach the property calls the American Riviera. A Goop shop is on site, naturally.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

Private cottages tucked into 550 acres against the Santa Ynez Mountains, with the Pacific spread out below. San Ysidro Ranch is a resort that has been a discreet hideaway forever, the kind of place where Winston Churchill and the honeymooning Kennedys came specifically to be left alone. The cottages are the point, not the lobby scene. It landed on the World's 50 Best Hotels list, which tracks for somewhere this quietly serious about making guests disappear.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. 50 Best #68 · The World's 50 Best Hotels
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Seventy-eight beachfront acres of white stucco and red-tiled roofs designed to echo a Spanish village, sitting between the Pacific and the Santa Ynez wine country. This Ritz-Carlton resort has 358 rooms, five restaurants, and one of the larger spas on the Central Coast, so leaving the property is entirely optional. The Santa Barbara coast tends to attract a crowd that has already decided leisure is a serious pursuit, and the hotel leans into that.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Don't let the word "inn" fool you: this is a full Spanish Colonial resort sprawling across a couple hundred wooded acres in the Ojai Valley, with a championship golf course, a serious spa complex, and enough pools to lose track of your afternoon. Hollywood has been retreating here since forever, and the laid-back Santa Barbara-area energy keeps it from feeling stuffy. A Forbes Four Star property that earns its keep with mountain views and room to exhale.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The Mission-style archway and stone lobby fireplace survived the restoration of Ojai's oldest hotel, which is the right call. El Roblar is a 50-room boutique hotel spread across a main building, private garden bungalows, and a newer Sycamore House wing, all done in warm earthy tones with locally sourced art on the walls. It sits right on Ojai Avenue, so the valley is essentially your front yard.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Refurbished Airstream trailers and a tiny house arranged in a semi-circle around a botanical garden, which is about as on-brand for Ojai as a sound bath at sunset. This small, bohemian trailer hotel sits in the Topatopa Mountains between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, each unit with a private outdoor nook, and a few with hammocks slung between palms. The crowd comes for hiking, galleries, and spiritual retreats, and leaves smelling faintly of sage.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels