Distinctive properties in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Taos and Las Cruces reflect the best of the Southwest. Pleasant dreams await the culturally minded traveler.
By Randy Mink, Senior Editor
You’re getting a genuine New Mexico experience when you stay or dine at a member of the Heritage Hotels & Resorts collection. From architecture, interior design and landscaping to cuisine, entertainment and artwork, the 10 culturally distinct hotels offer a warm, inviting ambience, blending the region’s Native American, Mexican, Spanish colonial and American Western influences.
Heritage Hotels in Santa Fe
In Santa Fe, I based myself at Hotel Chimayo de Santa Fe, located just steps from the shops, eateries, galleries and museums clustered around the city’s historic Plaza. My balcony overlooked a linear brick courtyard where the columns are festooned with ristras, the pretty hanging arrangements of sun-dried red chile peppers used as decoration throughout New Mexico. The lobby and guest rooms feature art and furnishings created by more than 70 local artists; many of them have links to the northern New Mexico village of Chimayo, famed for its pilgrimage church and nearby sacred sites, and colony of weavers, artists and craftsmen. Some suites offer wood-burning fireplaces.
A free amenity offered by the 56-room boutique hotel is a “low and slow” cruise around town in a silver 1964 Chevrolet Impala lowrider. A reflection of Chicano youth culture that emerged after World War II in the Southwest, these customized vintage cars with a lowered body are symbols of Mexican-American identity and an expression of community pride. Hotel Chimayo’s Low ’n Slow Lowrider Bar sports lowrider photographs, hubcap accents and tables made of chrome chain-link steering wheels.
Heritage Hotels’ 138-room Inn and Spa at Loretto, a short walk from Hotel Chimayo, was built in 1975 to resemble Taos Pueblo, the multi-storied adobe complex in northern New Mexico that has been inhabited for more than 1,000 years. Five of the guest rooms come with a real fireplace, others a faux version. The rambling AAA Four Diamond luxury property shares a city block with 19th century Loretto Chapel, famed for its “Miraculous Staircase,” a spiraling phenomenon with two 360-degree turns and no visible means of support.
Public areas in the 1920s Hotel St. Francis, the oldest hotel in Santa Fe, are furnished with religious artifacts, statues and paintings, including a stone baptismal font near the lobby fireplace. One-hour history tours showcase the 76-room hotel, a Mission Revival-style gem graced with majestic archways. I soaked up some of the vibe over cocktails at the Secreto Bar and New Mexico sparkling wines at Gruet Winery Tasting Room. The hotel’s Wolf and Roadrunner restaurant grills steak and game over pecan and shite oak. Menu items include venison, smoked elk sausage and bison striploin in bourbon-peppercorn sauce.
The New Mexico-based company’s other downtown Santa Fe property, with an exclusive rooftop pool and lounge, is the 219-room Eldorado Hotel & Spa.
Clyde Hotel lobby
Heritage Hotels in Albuquerque
In Albuquerque, the state’s largest city, I set up camp at downtown’s 386-room Clyde Hotel, a 20-story tower named after Clyde Tingley, who served as the state’s governor and the city’s mayor for many years between 1925 and 1953. The lobby features Art Deco touches and a mural chronicling Tingley’s career as a mover and shaker. Recorded music from the ’30s and ’40s serenades guests in the lobby’s sunken atrium lounge, a posh skylit space with marble tables, a grand piano and faux palms. The adjacent 1922 Bar & Lounge, offering a Prohibition-era vibe, is another place to hang out in style.
Hotel Chaco, Albuquerque
The 118-room Hotel Chaco and neighboring 188-room Hotel Albuquerque lie just north of Albuquerque’s Old Town, a tourist magnet brimming with shops, restaurants and historic sites. Hotel Chaco’s Level 5 rooftop restaurant offers indoor and outdoor seating with panoramic views of the city and Sandia Mountains. The building is modeled after New Mexico’s Pueblo villages and 11th century ruins at Chaco Canyon. Enhancing the guest rooms are fabrics with Navajo-inspired geometric patterns and handmade Navajo rugs. At Hotel Albuquerque, flamenco shows are staged on weekends.
The Albuquerque sister hotels are just steps from Sawmill Market, a spiffy new Heritage-owned food hall featuring 30 local merchants and a big outdoor patio called The Yard. Eateries include Red & Green, which dishes up New Mexican specialties like green chile stew and red chile pork tamales, and Little Madrid, a purveyor of paella, tapas and other tastes of Spain. In downtown Santa Fe, the Heritage group plans to open the Santa Fe Food Market, an artisan food hall, in 2026.
The Heritage Hotels & Resorts portfolio also includes two hotels in Taos—the 84-room El Monte Sagrado and intimate eight-room Palacio de Marquesa—and 210-room Hotel Encanto de las Cruces in Las Cruces.
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Lead Photo – Inn and Spa at Loretto, Santa Fe. (All photos courtesy of Heritage Hotels & Resorts)
