San Diego has quietly built one of the more interesting suite collections in the US, and four properties in particular show the range on offer — a film-famous penthouse, a Michelin-linked villa, a baseball balcony and a maximalist Hollywood revival.

Start at The Westgate Hotel, where the Governor's Suite occupies 1,800 square feet on the 19th floor with two bedrooms, a kitchenette and French Neoclassical detailing. The suite had a genuine moment of fame recently: it served as a key filming location for One Battle After Another, the Oscar-winning film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn. Sleeping where a Best Picture scene was shot is a niche bragging right, but a real one.

Across town, the Fairmont Grand Del Mar offers Villa Sorrento, a secluded multi-bedroom retreat with three bedrooms, marble fixtures and a living room with multiple fireplaces. The real draw is what's next door: Addison, chef William Bradley's three-Michelin-starred restaurant — the only one in San Diego. The hotel arranges private transport so you can do the tasting-menu thing and get back without thinking about it.

Baseball fans have a suite built for them. The Omni Hotel is the only hotel in the country connected to a Major League ballpark by a pedestrian skybridge, and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Suite overlooks Petco Park from a private balcony. The suite doubles as a small shrine to Carter, who threw the inaugural ceremonial pitch at the stadium in 2004. Book it for a Padres home game and you have one of the more unusual room-with-a-view setups in American sport.

The fourth option trades polish for personality. The Lafayette Hotel in North Park — once a haunt of Hollywood stars — reopened after a $31 million, award-winning renovation completed in 2023. Its Penthouse Suite leans into maximalist design with a four-poster king bed, an in-room vintage bathtub and a stocked minibar. What sets the property apart is everything downstairs: two restaurants, two bars, a jazz club and a game room, so a night in can easily stretch into a full evening without leaving the building.

For travellers, the appeal here is that these aren't interchangeable luxury boxes. Each suite has a story attached — a film, a president, a restaurant, a renovation — and they sit in very different corners of the city, from the downtown waterfront to North Park's bar scene. If a special-occasion trip to San Diego is on the cards, matching the suite to your interests beats picking by star rating alone.