Carlton Cannes, A Regent Hotel

The Hotel

The InterContinental Carlton opened in March 1911 at 58 La Croisette under the brief of the Polish-born architect Charles Dalmas, who built it as the largest Belle Epoque palace on the Mediterranean coast, the twin cupolas at the corners of the building intended (apocryphally but plausibly) to be modelled on the breasts of La Belle Otero, the Cuban-Spanish courtesan resident on the Riviera in the 1900s. The hotel hosted the founding of the Cannes Film Festival in 1946 and remained the festival's de facto palace through the second half of the twentieth century. In 2020 the IHG Group closed the property for a two-year, EUR 250 million top-to-bottom renovation under designer Tristan Auer and reopened it in March 2023 under the Regent brand, the chain's flagship European address.

The renovated Carlton holds 332 rooms (72 with sea view), 53 suites, and 37 branded residences in two new rear wings that wrap a 2,000 square metre internal garden, an addition that doubled the property's room count and added the first hotel garden of this scale on the Croisette. Tristan Auer's design rewrites the public rooms in a 1930s-French-modernist register, layered marble, brushed brass, deep upholstery, and a colour palette of deep green, oxblood, and ivory that the chain held back from approving for two years until the construction was complete. The standard rooms run 30 to 38 square metres; the upper suites stretch to 460 square metres in the Riviera Royal Suite, a category whose interior Auer signed personally.

Food and beverage opened in stages across 2023 and 2024. Riviera is the all-day Mediterranean room with a sea-view terrace at lunch and a tasting format at night; Carlton Beach is the private beach restaurant across the road; Le Grand Salon serves afternoon tea in the original Belle Epoque ballroom; and the Cigar Lounge by Le Carlton is the European cigar room with the deepest French humidor on the coast. The signature is the new infinity pool in the internal garden, the only true infinity pool on the Croisette, set against the rear facade of the original 1911 building with the garden's plane trees and palms on either side.

Service is the property's argument against the Martinez. The Regent brand uses Carlton Cannes as its European flagship and the operating standard is a step above the IHG average across the chain, with a butler service in suites and above, a curated arrival sequence, and a concierge desk run by the longest-serving team on La Croisette. The Cannes Lions Festival in June, the Yacht Show in September, and the Film Festival in May absorb the room count through the high season; outside those windows the property runs as the Riviera's most genuinely renewed grand hotel, the one address on La Croisette where the building itself is genuinely new without losing the period.

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Practical Information

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