ARRIVE Palm Springs

ARRIVE Palm Springs has the plan of a motel - low blocks of rooms round a pool, doors opening straight outside - and none of the age of one: it was built that way from new, in time for Coachella in 2016. We thought they had made it rather cooler than the word motel suggests. The street front is rust-red metal, folded into a zigzag along the roofline, with the bare brown San Jacinto Mountains behind it. Inside, the walls run to prickly pear wallpaper and mid-century bedside tables, and a strip of high windows under the ceiling which, guests have found, keeps a room from ever getting properly dark at night.

We came in October, for three nights, as part of a trip to Los Angeles: friends in Venice Beach first, then the drive out to the desert, just the two of us. Ours was a Studio, and a nice one. Much of the hotel was self-service, or meant to be: check-in on an iPad, drinks ordered from an app, which we found as convenient as it was novel. The iPad check-in did not work, and on a couple of occasions we needed a person after all. We put that down to the novelty and did not mind.

The pool is the centre of the place, and earns it: a long rectangle of pale blue water, heated, with white-cushioned loungers under black-and-white striped parasols and tall palms along the deck. We sat out there with drinks, in weather we could not have improved on. Breakfast was extra on our rate and very good indeed, which is the right way round. It now comes off the all-day brunch menu at Palm Canyon Swim & Social, the poolside restaurant and bar, under a timber canopy with a ceiling fan over green-tiled tables: avocado toast, or a green chile smash burger for anyone who slept through the morning. After dark there are fire pits; for the energetic, bocce and ping pong. The ice cream parlour doubles as the gift shop, and the flavour to have, the hotel says, is Coachella Valley Date.

Downtown is a mile south down Palm Canyon Drive, on foot or on one of the hotel's bicycles, and on Thursday evenings VillageFest turns the street into a market. We ate out in town, and ate well. The mountains need the car: the Aerial Tramway climbs into them, and the Indian Canyons trails lead to the palm oases.

Check-in has since moved to a front desk beside the bar, and housekeeping or more ice can be asked for by text, so the self-service carries on with someone at the other end of it. Nobody under 21 is admitted. The one exception is a well-behaved dog.