Palm Springs Review is a practical guide to Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley for people deciding where to go, what to do, what to book, and what might actually be worth leaving the pool for.
Use it to plan a first desert trip, build a better weekend, find something new close to home or understand how the valley fits together before you start making reservations.
Palm Springs proper, Greater Palm Springs, and the naming situation
Palm Springs is a real city with real boundaries. Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio, and the valley’s other communities are not secretly neighborhoods of Palm Springs, no matter how enthusiastically a hotel listing, event calendar or national travel site suggests otherwise.
That said, “Palm Springs” is often used as shorthand for the broader destination, much like “Los Angeles” can somehow stretch across half of Southern California when someone is explaining where they live. The tourism world often calls the region Greater Palm Springs. We understand the shorthand, but we also respect the map.
PSR covers Palm Springs proper and the surrounding Coachella Valley. We identify the actual city whenever it matters, especially for driving time, local rules, resident programs, and deciding whether “near downtown Palm Springs” means five minutes away or an optimistic half hour.
The 60/40 rule
Think of Palm Springs Review as roughly 60% for visitors and 40% for locals.
The visitor side helps with trip planning, hotels and resorts, attractions, restaurants, events, tours, transportation, seasonal conditions, and the details that become important the moment you are actually trying to go somewhere.
The local side is for anyone who has lived here long enough to stop treating the Tram as a vacation activity but still wants a reason to go back. It covers new places to try, familiar places worth revisiting, local events, day trips, resident deals and practical benefits, ways to support local businesses, and ideas for making better use of the extraordinary landscape sitting just outside the grocery-store routine.
It also includes preparation resources for adventures beyond a standard afternoon outing, such as camping, hiking, mountain escapes, and desert day trips. Knowing where to go is useful. Knowing what to bring, what conditions to expect, and what requires advance planning is better.
What you can find here
- Things to do: museums, architecture, nature, wellness, entertainment, sports, family activities, tours, and attractions.
- Food and drink: longstanding local favorites, new discoveries, destination dining, and useful options near the places you are already going.
- Trip planning: places to stay, transportation, tickets, packages, itineraries, and seasonal considerations.
- Events: annual traditions, major weekends, recurring local events, and timely planning information.
- Desert cities: guides that treat each community as a place with its own identity, not merely as Palm Springs with a different ZIP code.
- Local resources: resident offers, community information, local-business features, and practical ways to explore and support the valley.
- Beyond the valley: day trips, mountain escapes, camping preparation, and destinations that make sense from a desert home base.
How to use Palm Springs Review
If you are visiting, start with Trip Guides, Things to Do or Book Your Trip. If you live here, browse by experience, check Desert Events, explore a neighboring city or look for something you have somehow driven past for six years without entering.
Individual guides are designed to answer practical questions and point you toward official resources for details that change, including hours, prices, closures, reservation rules, accessibility, and seasonal conditions. Always confirm time-sensitive information with the venue or provider before heading out.
A guide to experiencing the valley, not just checking boxes
The Coachella Valley can be a resort weekend, an architecture pilgrimage, a trailhead, a food crawl, a hockey night, a mineral-water retreat or simply home. Palm Springs Review sits between tourism information and local curiosity. The goal is to help visitors experience the area with more context and help locals keep discovering the place they already live.
Start wherever sounds good today. We will help with the rest.