sofitel los angeles 

Sofitel Los Angeles, Room 925: A Masterclass in Not Getting It Wrong

The Bed: A Flawless Score, Slept Soundly

Room 925's bed earned a perfect 100%. Linens, mattress and pillows each arrived at five out of five, which is rarer than it sounds; most hotels manage two of the three and hope nobody is keeping score. Here nothing needed adjusting, requesting, or quietly enduring until morning. The bed simply worked — the highest compliment a bed can be paid.

The Room: Lovely to Look At, Awkward to Work In

Cleanliness, layout and view swept a perfect 100%, making the room a genuine pleasure to occupy. Style, noise, HVAC, minibar and room service all landed comfortably above average. The trouble began the moment our reviewer attempted to be productive. The workspace scored 60% and the outlets matched it, leaving anyone traveling with a laptop, a phone and a modest sense of ambition to ration power between them. A room this handsome should not require negotiating with a power strip.

The Bathroom: Hot Water, Great Towels, Modest Ambition

At 96%, the bathroom came within a whisker of perfection. Cleanliness, water pressure, water temperature and towels were all faultless — the four things that actually matter, all properly handled. Only the amenities held back at 80%: pleasant enough, but not the sort of thing anyone finds a reason to pack.

The Hotel: Los Angeles, Done Properly

The property scored 93%, and it earned every point. The lobby, the fitness center, the bars and restaurants, the location and the overall style each returned a perfect 100% — and service, the category most likely to quietly betray a hotel of this class, did exactly the same. That is an unusually even performance.

The single sour note was the Wi-Fi at 60%, with business facilities merely adequate at 80%. For a hotel that gets very nearly everything else right, the connectivity is a strange thing to have left on the cutting-room floor — particularly in a city that runs almost entirely on people emailing each other about projects that will never be made.