The 143-room South Palm Springs hotel is joining Sam Nazarian’s expanding HQ Hotels & Residences collection, bringing Umami Pool and Katsuya Ko to the property as its owner launches another major repositioning of the resort.
One of Palm Springs’ more prominent boutique hotels is preparing for another multimillion-dollar reinvention, this time focused less on rebuilding the property than on changing what happens inside it.
V Capri Palm Springs, the 143-room hotel at 333 E. Palm Canyon Drive, has joined Sam Nazarian’s sbe Entertainment Group through its growing HQ Hotels & Residences collection, setting in motion a phased repositioning that will add new restaurant and pool concepts, refresh guestrooms and public spaces, and expand entertainment and programming.
The hotel will remain open through the transition and will continue operating as a Dolce by Wyndham property, according to the companies. View V Capri at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
The investment is described only as multimillion-dollar. Neither the hotel’s ownership nor sbe has disclosed a precise capital budget, construction schedule, architect or contractor, or the extent of building permits that may be required for the work.
But the announced elements make the strategy clear.
Later in 2026, V Capri plans to introduce Umami Pool, an adults-only, day-to-night venue centered on food, cocktails and entertainment. In early 2027, the hotel’s existing GiGi’s Restaurant is scheduled to become Katsuya Ko, a newer, more casual iteration of sbe’s Katsuya Japanese restaurant brand.
Guestrooms and public spaces also are scheduled for cosmetic improvements, while additional food, beverage and entertainment programming is intended to make the property a destination for local customers as well as hotel guests.
For Palm Springs, the significance extends beyond another hotel remodel.
The project represents substantial private reinvestment in an existing hospitality asset at a time when the economics of building new hotels have become increasingly difficult. It also illustrates the direction of the lifestyle-hotel business itself, where restaurants, pool experiences, entertainment and local traffic can matter almost as much as the guestrooms upstairs.
A hotel that has been reinvented before
V Capri’s latest makeover is not its first.
The property was formerly the Curve Palm Springs Hotel & Resort before undergoing a reported $15 million renovation and emerging as V Palm Springs roughly a decade ago. The transformation modernized the 1960s-era property with new guestrooms, restaurant and pool areas, and a distinctly lifestyle-oriented identity.
The hotel changed affiliations again this year when it became V Capri Palm Springs and joined Wyndham Hotels & Resorts’ upscale Dolce portfolio.
Now sbe is being added to the mix.
That makes the current investment particularly notable. Rather than rescuing a neglected or obsolete property, ownership is putting additional money into a hotel that has already received significant capital improvements and recently gained access to Wyndham’s distribution and loyalty infrastructure.
It is, in effect, another bet that a repositioned Palm Springs hotel can generate more value by strengthening its identity rather than simply adding rooms.
Owner Mark Geragos said the goal is to continue evolving the property for today’s traveler through what he described as “meaningful investment and an elevated guest experience.”
Nazarian said V Capri’s existing “authentic personality and a loyal following” attracted sbe to the property.
Why sbe wants Palm Springs
For sbe, the V Capri transaction fits directly into the strategy behind HQ Hotels & Residences.
Nazarian launched the platform with Wyndham in 2024 as a new approach to the lifestyle-hotel category. Rather than focusing primarily on expensive ground-up developments, HQ was designed largely to convert and reposition existing hotels by combining lodging with recognizable restaurant, nightlife and wellness concepts.
The original plan called for roughly 80 percent of HQ properties to be conversions rather than new construction. The company is now working toward a portfolio of 50 hotels worldwide by 2031.
That model is especially relevant in Palm Springs.
The city already contains an unusually deep inventory of independent, boutique and upper-upscale hotels, many occupying valuable locations where redevelopment would be costly and potentially complicated. For owners of those properties, the economic question increasingly becomes whether an existing hotel can be repositioned to capture higher room revenue and substantially more food, beverage and entertainment spending.
V Capri offers sbe an existing 143-room platform near downtown, two pools, restaurant and bar operations, meeting and event spaces and an established guest base without requiring construction of an entirely new resort.
For V Capri, sbe brings the hospitality company’s restaurant brands, lifestyle programming expertise and marketing reach.
Wyndham adds another layer through its reservation system, global distribution and Wyndham Rewards program.
The combination potentially gives V Capri something many independent Palm Springs hotels are seeking: the personality and programming of a boutique property combined with the customer reach of a major lodging company.
Katsuya Ko becomes an important part of the bet
The conversion of GiGi’s into Katsuya Ko could prove to be one of the project’s more consequential changes.
Katsuya Ko is the younger, more casual extension of sbe’s established Katsuya restaurant business created with chef Katsuya Uechi. Its first location opened in La Jolla in February 2026, with sbe positioning the concept as more approachable than the original Katsuya while retaining sushi, sashimi, robata and other Japanese and pan-Asian offerings.
Palm Springs therefore is not simply getting another location of a mature national chain. It is becoming an early expansion market for a restaurant concept that sbe is still developing.
Umami Pool follows a similar strategy.
Rather than treating the pool strictly as an amenity for overnight guests, sbe intends to turn it into an adults-only food, cocktail and entertainment venue operating from daytime into evening.
That potentially places V Capri more squarely into Palm Springs’ competitive market for poolside social experiences, day clubs, restaurant traffic and special events.
For hotels in destination markets, those revenue streams can be particularly important. A guestroom can generally be sold once each night. A successful restaurant, bar or pool venue can generate spending from overnight guests, local residents and visitors staying elsewhere.
Reinvestment comes as hotel operators face a mixed market
The timing also makes the investment notable.
Greater Palm Springs remains extraordinarily dependent on tourism. Visit Greater Palm Springs estimates that approximately 15 million visitors generated $9.6 billion in regional economic impact during 2025, with tourism supporting about one in every four local jobs.
Palm Springs itself continues to command some of the region’s strongest hotel rates, but the business remains highly seasonal.
As GPS Business Insider recently reported in its examination of the city’s boutique-hotel market, Palm Springs hotel occupancy during the 12 months ending in May was approximately 60 percent, with significantly stronger performance during the winter and spring tourism season and much softer occupancy during summer. Read GPS Business Insider’s Palm Springs boutique-hotel market analysis
City finances show why hotel investment matters beyond the properties themselves. Transient occupancy tax generated about $51 million for Palm Springs in fiscal year 2025, making lodging taxes one of the municipal government’s largest revenue sources.
The city has spent years encouraging hotel modernization because upgraded properties can command higher rates, generate additional taxable room revenue and keep Palm Springs competitive against other resort destinations.
V Capri’s latest investment appears different from several of the city’s historic hotel incentive transactions because the announced project is being presented as privately financed. No city incentive has been identified as part of the sbe announcement.
That makes the project an especially useful gauge of what private hotel ownership believes Palm Springs can support.
The bigger business story
The most interesting question about V Capri may ultimately be whether the physical renovations or the operational changes create more value.
The hospitality industry has been moving steadily toward hotels that function as broader entertainment businesses. Rooms remain essential, but restaurants, bars, wellness, events, branded experiences and programming increasingly distinguish one lifestyle property from another.
HQ Hotels was created around precisely that proposition.
Palm Springs is a logical laboratory for it.
The city has a globally recognizable destination brand, high leisure demand, a history of architecturally distinctive hotels and a customer base accustomed to treating hotels as places to dine, drink, socialize and attend events even when they are not staying overnight.
It also has formidable competition.
Hotels throughout Palm Springs have invested heavily in pools, restaurants, design, programming and events. The addition of sbe’s brands does not guarantee that V Capri will gain market share, particularly during the slower summer months when virtually every operator is competing for a smaller pool of visitors.
The undisclosed size of the investment also matters. A project costing a few million dollars would carry a considerably different return requirement than another renovation approaching the scale of the property’s earlier $15 million overhaul.
More detail about the capital budget, construction work and operating relationship between V Capri, sbe and Wyndham will ultimately make the economics easier to assess.
For now, however, the direction is unmistakable.
An existing Palm Springs hotel that already has undergone one major transformation, and only recently adopted a new Wyndham affiliation, is being repositioned again.
This time, the bet is not primarily on more rooms.
It is on giving visitors, and potentially Palm Springs residents, more reasons to spend money once they arrive.
Bob Marra is the CEO/Publisher of GPS Business Insider. He has been studying, writing and giving presentations about business, economic and public affairs news and issues and the local economy in the Greater Palm Springs/Coachella Valley region for more than 20 years.
