While there are a number of memorable fictional movie hotels (the Grand Budapest Hotel, the Bates Motel, and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel are a few that come to mind) there are many more that are real, working businesses that offer guests a chance to experience some of their favorite movie locations, while also offering a great night’s sleep. Here are 15 movie hotels you can book in real life.
1. PARK HYATT TOKYO // TOKYO
Located in the heart of the city, the Park Hyatt Tokyo is the five-star hotel at the center of Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning Lost In Translation. Along with its spectacular views of the neon lights of downtown Tokyo and Mount Fuji in the distance, you can also order a glass of Suntory Whisky at the New York Bar in the 52-story skyscraper where Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) first met and began their wild adventure through Japan.
2. MOUNTAIN LAKE LODGE // PEMBROKE, VIRGINIA
Although it takes place at the fictional Kellerman’s Resort in New York’s Catskill Mountains, Dirty Dancing (1987) was actually filmed at two locations: Lake Lure in North Carolina and the Mountain Lake Hotel in Pembroke, Virginia, which is still a popular vacation spot. The hotel hosts Dirty Dancing weekends with group dance lessons, a tour of the filming locations, and a watermelon toss. The resort even features the Virginia Cottage (or “Baby’s Cabin”), where the Houseman Family stayed in the film. It’s also where “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner!“
3. THE PLAZA HOTEL // NEW YORK
New York City’s Plaza Hotel is a famed shooting location for many Hollywood movies, including Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) stayed at the luxury hotel when he was separated from the rest of his family (again) in this 1992 sequel. The legendary hotel also served as the new home for Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) when he came to New York from Australia in Crocodile Dundee (1986), as well as the location where William Miller (Patrick Fugit) finds Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), who almost overdosed at the end of Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000).
Other movies that were filmed at The Plaza include North by Northwest (1959), Arthur (1981), American Hustle (2013), and The Great Gatsby (2013).
4. BEVERLY WILSHIRE // BEVERLY HILLS
The primary filming location for Pretty Woman (1990) was the historic Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The luxury hotel even offers guests a glamorous “Pretty Woman For The Day” package, which starts at $15,000 and features a stay in the “Pretty Woman Suite” (the hotel’s Presidential Suite), a personal shopper on Rodeo Drive, a couple’s massage, a “shoeless” picnic with cuisine inspired by the movie, and a night at the Los Angeles Opera. The Beverly Wilshire Hotel also made appearances in Clueless (1995), Sex and the City: The Movie (2008), and Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971).
5. HOTEL DEGLI ORAFI // FLORENCE
If you’d like to stay in the beautiful and romantic room from James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1985), ask for Room 414 on the fourth floor in the Hotel Degli Orafi in Florence, Italy. It’s true, the room has an amazing view of the Arno river and the Ponte Vecchio.
6. CHATEAU MARMONT // LOS ANGELES
Sofia Coppola shot her fourth film, 2010’s Somewhere, almost entirely on location at Los Angeles’s Chateau Marmont, a luxury hotel known for its celebrity guests and residents. In fact, the film’s star, Stephen Dorff, stayed at the hotel during production to get into the mindset of his character and to easily get to set every day.
“I was living in Paris, and I was homesick,” Coppola explained to LA Weekly of why she shot the film at the hotel. “In France, it’s so different, and I was thinking about L.A., how it seems like our whole pop culture is so interested in celebrity, and now people all know about the Chateau Marmont. There have been iconic L.A. movies that I always loved, and I thought, ‘We haven’t had one showing today, this era of L.A.’ ”
Many L.A.-based artists and writers such as Billy Wilder, Hunter S. Thompson, Annie Leibovitz, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tim Burton have all stayed and worked within the Chateau Marmont at one time during their careers, while The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison took up a brief residence at the hotel. Unfortunately, John Belushi also died of a drug overdose in one of its rooms in 1982. At the end of La La Land, Oscar winner Emma Stone’s Mia Dolan finds herself at the legendary hotel.
7. CAESARS PALACE // LAS VEGAS
The Hangover (2009) was shot almost entirely on location at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas (and no, Caesar didn’t really live there). Aside from the Wolfpack’s villa—which was a sound stage in Hollywood—a majority of the hotel and casino were used for filming, including the front desk, lobby, entrance driveway, pools, corridors, elevators, and the infamous rooftop, where Doug (Justin Bartha) was found at the end of the comedy. Other movies that were filmed at Caesars Palace include Rain Man (1988), Iron Man (2008), Dreamgirls (2006), and The Big Short (2015).
8. FONTAINEBLEAU MIAMI BEACH // MIAMI BEACH
The Fontainebleau Miami Beach is featured at the beginning of Goldfinger (1965) and is where James Bond (Sean Connery) first met the villainous Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe). It was also the location of the iconic scene where Bond discovers the dead body of the character Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) after the lethal henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) suffocated her by painting her in gold.
In addition, the luxury hotel was also the setting for Jerry Lewis’s The Bellboy (1960) and Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988).
9. PLAZA HOTEL // LAS VEGAS, NEW MEXICO
Founded in 1882, the Plaza Hotel is an historical landmark in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The Coen brothers renamed the hotel The Eagle Pass Hotel in No Country For Old Men (2007). The hotel is where the heart-stopping shootout between Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) took place.
10. TIMBERLINE LODGE // MOUNT HOOD NATIONAL FOREST, OREGON
Just outside of Portland, Oregon and near the peak of Mount Hood rests the Timberline Lodge, which was featured in The Shining (1980). While its interiors were filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England, director Stanley Kubrick used the Timberline Lodge for the exteriors of The Overlook Hotel. Although the hotel doesn’t have a Room 237, the hotel’s most requested room is number 217—the mysterious and haunted room from Stephen King’s best-selling novel, on which the film is based. King also used the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado as inspiration for the book.
Today, the Timberline Lodge is a popular vacation spot for its amazing ski slopes and snowboarding. There’s also an annual Overlook Film Festival, which showcases the strangest and brightest films in horror.
11. JUVET LANDSCAPE HOTEL // VALLDAL, NORWAY
Located in the side of a mountain in northern Norway, the modernist Juvet Landscape Hotel was the filming location for tech billionaire Nathan Bateman’s (Oscar Isaac) isolated home in 2015’s Ex Machina. While Norwegian architects Jensen & Skodvin designed the hotel with the idea of simplistic modern design in a tranquil setting, producers chose the scenic location to emphasize the character’s power and good taste.
“We wanted it to be among nature, we wanted it to be stunning, and we wanted it to be exclusive,” Ex Machina’s production designer, Mark Digby, told Vanity Fair. “We felt someone as powerful, as rich as this, and as intellectually competent as him, would have a good sense of design.”
12. HOTEL DEL CORONADO // CORONADO, CALIFORNIA
One of the greatest comedies in American cinema history, a number of scenes from Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1958)—which follows two musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) who flee town after witnessing a mob hit and later disguise themselves as women to join an all-female band—was filmed at the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California. The historic hotel, which appeared as the Seminole Ritz Hotel in Miami, was selected because it fit the film’s 1920s era setting with its Victorian architecture.
Fun Fact: Author L. Frank Baum wrote three books in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz series at the Hotel del Coronado during the early 20th century. He designed elements of the Emerald City based on the hotel.
13. RELAIS BOURGONDISCH CRUYCE // BRUGGE, BELGIUM
In In Bruges (2008), Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are sent to Belgium and hole up at the Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce, which is located at the intersection of two canals in Brugge, until the two hit men get further instructions from their crime boss (Ralph Fiennes). The boutique hotel is considered one of the most romantic hotels in Europe, while Lonely Planet even called the bed-and-breakfast, “The very epitome of a Bruges experience.”
14. MILLENNIUM BILTMORE HOTEL // LOS ANGELES
First opening its doors in 1923, Hollywood has long had a fascination with Los Angeles’s Millennium Biltmore Hotel. The historic hotel has appeared in a number of big movie productions, from The Sting (1973) and Chinatown (1974), which filmed in its Gold Room and Limousine/VIP Ramp, respectively, to Ghostbusters (1984) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984), which used its Music Room and Rendezvous Court, respectively, as filming locations. The hotel has also appeared in many other movies, including Bachelor Party (1984), Splash (1984), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), and Cruel Intentions (1999).
As legend has it, the Millennium Biltmore Hotel was also the last place Elizabeth Short (a.k.a. the Black Dahlia) was seen before her dead body was discovered bisected in a vacant lot in 1947.
15. SANDTON HOTEL DE FILOSOOF // AMSTERDAM
The whirlwind romance between Augustus (Ansel Elgort) and Hazel (Shailene Woodley) in The Fault in Our Stars (2014) took place at the Hotel de Filosoof in Amsterdam, where author John Green wrote the novel on which the film is based. Although the couple stayed at the hotel, its interiors were actually filmed at the American Hotel across town.
April 18, 2017 – 10:00am