I have lived in Sacramento my whole life, and I still check into hotels here for staycations. These nine are the best hotels in Sacramento, spread across Downtown, Midtown, the Old Sacramento Waterfront and the river. Four are in structures older than 1930: an 1894 mansion, a 1923 public market, a 1925 insurance tower and a 1927 riverboat. A fifth stands behind the facade of a 1911 jazz hotel.
I chose each one for the restaurant and bar on site, the rooms, and the Sacramento history in the building. Two are hotels I have stayed at myself.
✦ Key Takeaways
- Nine hotels in four areas. Five are Downtown, two sit beside the Old Sacramento Waterfront, one is in Midtown and one is on the Sacramento River about four miles from the convention center.
- AAA Four Diamond. The Kimpton Sawyer, the Westin Sacramento and the Hyatt Regency are the three hotels in the city with AAA’s Four Diamond rating.
- My staycations. I have stayed at the Hyatt Centric and the Westin and enjoyed both. Their restaurants are The 7th Street Standard and Scott’s Seafood on the River.
- Oldest buildings. The Sterling is an 1894 mansion, the Sheraton Grand’s lobby is Julia Morgan’s 1923 Public Market, The Citizen is a 1925 tower and the Delta King is a 1927 riverboat.
- Smallest and largest. The Sterling has 16 rooms and the Sheraton Grand has 503.
- Closest to Golden 1 Center. The Kimpton Sawyer faces the arena across Downtown Commons, and the Hyatt Centric is next door on 7th Street.
- Pools. The Kimpton Sawyer, Sheraton Grand and Westin have outdoor pools, and Embassy Suites has an indoor one.
Sacramento Hotels at a Glance
| Hotel | Area | Rooms | Building | Restaurant and Bar | Reserve |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyatt Centric Downtown Sacramento | Downtown, beside Golden 1 Center | 172 | Opened 2021 behind 1911 hotel facades | The 7th Street Standard, Clayton Club | Booking.com |
| Kimpton Sawyer Hotel | Downtown Commons | 250 | Opened 2017 | Revival at the Sawyer, Echo & Rig | Booking.com |
| The Citizen Hotel | Downtown, J Street | 196 | 1925 tower, hotel since 2008 | Grange Restaurant & Bar | Booking.com |
| Sheraton Grand Sacramento | Downtown, by the convention center | 503 | 1923 Public Market and a 28-story tower | Booking.com | |
| The Sterling Hotel | Downtown, H Street | 16 | 1894 mansion, hotel since 1988 | Hotel site | |
| Delta King Hotel | Old Sacramento Waterfront | 44 | 1927 riverboat, hotel since 1989 | Pilothouse Restaurant, Delta Bar & Grill | Booking.com |
| Embassy Suites Riverfront Promenade | Capitol Mall at Tower Bridge | 242 suites | All-suite hotel with an atrium | Booking.com | |
| The Westin Sacramento Hotel & Marina | Sacramento River, Riverside Boulevard | 101 | Riverfront hotel with a marina built in 2008 | Scott’s Seafood on the River | Booking.com |
| The Fort Sutter Hotel | Midtown | 105 | Opened 2021 | Café Bernardo, Four Palms | Booking.com |
Downtown Sacramento Hotels
Hyatt Centric Downtown Sacramento
The Hyatt Centric is one of the two hotels here where I have spent a staycation, and I enjoyed it. It opened in October 2021 with 172 rooms on 11 floors, next to Golden 1 Center, behind two preserved facades of a hotel built in 1911.
That building opened as the Hotel Clayton and became the Hotel Marshall in 1939, named for James W. Marshall, who found gold in the American River. From the 1920s to the 1950s the stage in its Clayton Club hosted Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway, in the part of downtown then called the West End. Marshall amplifiers are now stacked behind the front desk.
The 7th Street Standard is the restaurant on the ground floor, and I last ate there in October 2024. Executive Chef Ravin Patel grew up in Sacramento and ran the kitchen at Ella before joining the hotel’s owner in 2018. Chef de Cuisine Pedro Depina cooked at Biba and Paragary’s.
The dining room surrounds a horseshoe-shaped bar, and brunch runs daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. On Kings home game days, team gear takes 20% off the food bill.
Clayton Club is the sixth-floor lounge, named for the original jazz room. It pours cocktails and serves small plates to guests 21 and over, Wednesday through Saturday from 5 p.m., on a terrace with fire pits. Vinyl records cover the walls.
1122 7th St, Sacramento, CA 95814
Hotel: Website | Booking.com
7th Street Standard: Website | Instagram | Facebook
Clayton Club: Website | Instagram | Facebook
Last visited: October 2024.
Kimpton Sawyer Hotel
The Kimpton Sawyer opened on October 10, 2017 as Sacramento’s first Kimpton, with 250 rooms at Downtown Commons, the plaza in front of Golden 1 Center. AAA rates it Four Diamond.
The lobby has 30-foot windows and a front desk shaped like a gold nugget. Upstairs, the rooms are finished in milled California oak, in grays and browns drawn from the Sierra Nevada.
Revival at the Sawyer is the bar on the third-floor pool deck, looking over the plaza and the arena. Its menu has oysters on the half shell, tacos, truffle fries and a burger, with DJs and live music in the evenings.
The heated pool beside it is open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and is reserved for hotel guests.
Echo & Rig, chef Sam Marvin’s steakhouse, is on the ground floor of the same building and serves dinner daily from 4 to 11 p.m.
Pets of any size stay free. Sacramento Valley Station, the city’s Amtrak stop, is two blocks away.
500 J St, Sacramento, CA 95814
Hotel: Website | Instagram | Booking.com
Revival: Website | Instagram
Echo & Rig: Website | Instagram
The Citizen Hotel
The Citizen fills a 14-story tower built in 1925 for the California Western States Life Insurance Company. George Sellon, California’s first state architect, designed it, and at 216 feet it was the tallest building in Sacramento when it opened. It became a hotel in 2008 and has 196 rooms.
The exterior is brick and Gladding-McBean tile, and the lobby is marble. Political cartoons by Jack Ohman, Rex Babin and Newton Pratt hang inside, and three of the meeting rooms are named Quorum, Yea and Nay.
Grange Restaurant & Bar, on the ground floor, has been listed in the Michelin Guide every year from 2021 through 2025. Executive Chef Erik Dandee buys from Riverdog Farm in the Capay Valley, Twin Peaks Orchards, Niman Ranch and Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese. The coffee is Old Soul, roasted in Sacramento.
Valet parking is $50 a night, and the hotel adds a $10 nightly facility fee to every stay.
926 J St, Sacramento, CA 95814
Hotel: Website | Instagram | Booking.com
Grange: Website | Instagram
Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel
The Sheraton Grand is the largest of the nine, with 503 rooms in a 28-story tower one block from the convention center. Its lobby, restaurant and meeting rooms are in the Public Market Building, which opened in 1923. Julia Morgan, the architect of Hearst Castle, designed it.
The market sold meat, fruit and deli goods into the 1970s. Its merchants gave the meeting rooms their names: Beavis for the Beavis Meat Company, Bondi for the Bondi Fruit Company, Durang and Schmidt for the delicatessen.
“They also hung entire steers from ceiling hooks. It was a genuine meat market,” Jeroen Gerrese, then the general manager, told Comstock’s in May 2026, after a $35 million renovation.
The hotel’s art collection includes William T. Wiley’s “Sacramento California 2000” and Viola Frey’s “The Marketplace.” There is an outdoor pool.
1230 J St, Sacramento, CA 95814
Hotel: Website | Instagram | Booking.com
The Sterling Hotel
The Sterling is a 16-room Victorian mansion at 13th and H streets, built in 1894 for the Hale family of the Weinstock-Lubin-Hale partnership. It was divided into apartments in the 1930s, bought and renovated in 1987, and reopened as a hotel in early 1988. A ballroom added in 1995 holds 200 seated guests, and Wedgewood Weddings runs the events there.
Five of the seven room types have a Jacuzzi tub. In the Huntington Suite the tub is ringed by pillars in a bathroom finished floor to ceiling in marble.
The hotel points guests to the restaurants nearby, and my guide to Sacramento restaurants covers 105 places by cuisine and neighborhood.
The front desk is staffed from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., check-in runs until 10:30 p.m., and parking is at the city’s Memorial Garage a block away at 14th and H.
1300 H St, Sacramento, CA 95814
Hotel: Website
Old Sacramento and Riverfront Hotels
Delta King Hotel
The Delta King is a 285-foot paddlewheel riverboat moored at the Old Sacramento Waterfront, with 44 hotel rooms made from its 88 original staterooms. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The King and its twin, the Delta Queen, were christened on May 20, 1927. They ran overnight between San Francisco and Sacramento until 1940, leaving at 6 p.m. for a trip of ten and a half hours, and the Navy then put both boats to work on San Francisco Bay.
In 1948 the Delta Queen left for the Mississippi with the King’s steam engines aboard as spare parts. The King later housed aluminum plant workers in Kitimat, Canada, and sat partly submerged in San Francisco Bay for 15 months. The Coyne family bought it in 1984, restored it over five years and opened the hotel in April 1989.
The Pilothouse Restaurant is in the boat’s original dining room. Executive Chef Luis Zumba’s dinner menu, dated July 5, 2026, has brick chicken at $36, Skuna Bay salmon at $37 and short rib bourguignon at $52.
Delta Bar & Grill is up the original grand staircase and has a 180-degree view of the river. House cocktails run $13 to $16, and Sobon Old Vine Zinfandel from Amador County is $13 a glass. Both rooms are in my guide to Sacramento river restaurants.
1000 Front St, Sacramento, CA 95814
Hotel: Website | Instagram | Booking.com
Embassy Suites by Hilton Sacramento Riverfront Promenade
Embassy Suites stands at 100 Capitol Mall beside Tower Bridge, across from Old Sacramento, with 242 one-bedroom suites. Visit Sacramento calls it the only all-suite, full-service hotel on the river.
The rate includes a cooked-to-order breakfast, served from 6:30 a.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. on weekends, and an evening reception.
The suites surround an atrium, and the hotel has an indoor pool and a hot tub.
100 Capitol Mall, Sacramento, CA 95814
Hotel: Website | Booking.com
The Westin Sacramento Hotel & Marina
The Westin is the other hotel where I have spent a staycation and enjoyed it. It has 101 rooms on the bank of the Sacramento River at 4800 Riverside Boulevard, 4.2 miles from the convention center, and AAA rates it Four Diamond.
The grounds hold an outdoor pool, a hot tub, fire pits, two bocce courts and Spa LaLé, and the hotel rents bikes.
Scott’s Seafood on the River is the hotel’s restaurant, opened by Alan and Sigrid Irvine in January 2008. It serves breakfast, lunch and dinner on weekdays and brunch on weekends, with a heated patio. The dinner menu lists Boston clam chowder at $10 a cup, cioppino at $53 and a Harris Ranch filet with lobster tail at $92.
The dock in front is the Little Sitka Marina, named for a 37-foot steamboat that was the first steam-powered vessel to sail up the Sacramento River to Sutter’s Fort. The Westin’s owners restored the marina in 2026, and boaters can tie up and walk to the restaurant.
4800 Riverside Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95822
Hotel: Website | Instagram | Booking.com
Scott’s Seafood on the River: Website | Instagram
Midtown Sacramento Hotels
The Fort Sutter Hotel
The Fort Sutter opened in 2021 with 105 rooms in Midtown, a block from Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. Restaurateur Randy Paragary and his wife, Stacy Paragary, built the hotel around a restaurant. He died months after it opened, and she is president of the Paragary Group. Work by local artists hangs in the lobby and hallways year-round.
Café Bernardo is the Paragary group’s European-style café and opens at 7 a.m. Breakfast includes the Bernardo Benedict, with Niman Ranch ham on toasted rosemary bread, at $16.75, and kimchi fried rice at $14.50.
Four Palms is the lobby bar and patio. It serves Café Bernardo dishes with Northern California wines and craft beer, and it stays open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. My late night happy hour guide lists other Sacramento bars open late.
Self-parking is $18 a day at the Sutter Community garage at 2701 N Street.
1308 28th St, Sacramento, CA 95816
Hotel Website | Instagram | Facebook | Booking.com
Café Bernardo and Four Palms: Website | Instagram
Where to Stay in Sacramento
Golden 1 Center and the convention center are six blocks apart, about half a mile, so any of the five Downtown hotels works for a Kings game, a concert or a conference on foot. Visit Sacramento counts more than 2,000 hotel rooms within walking distance of the convention center.
Old Sacramento, where the Delta King is moored, is about a five-minute walk from the arena.
From the Fort Sutter, the Paragary group’s Centro Cocina Mexicana, Paragary’s and Ace of Spades are nearby in Midtown. The Sacramento guide has the rest of the city by neighborhood.
The Westin is the only one of the nine outside the central city, and it is 14 miles from the airport.
Sacramento International Airport is 12 miles from downtown. A cab to the Kimpton Sawyer takes about 15 minutes and costs around $36 before tip, and SacRT’s Route 142 express bus runs between the airport and downtown seven days a week.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best hotel in Sacramento?
AAA gives its Four Diamond rating to three Sacramento hotels: the Kimpton Sawyer, the Westin Sacramento and the Hyatt Regency. I have stayed at the Hyatt Centric and the Westin on staycations and enjoyed both. Their restaurants are The 7th Street Standard and Scott’s Seafood on the River.
What are the best boutique hotels in Sacramento?
The Sterling Hotel has 16 rooms in an 1894 mansion, and the Delta King has 44 aboard a 1927 riverboat. The Westin Sacramento has 101 rooms on the river, the Fort Sutter has 105 in Midtown, and The Citizen has 196 in a 1925 tower downtown.
Are there any 5-star hotels in Sacramento?
AAA’s highest rating in Sacramento is Four Diamond, one step below its top Five Diamond tier. Three hotels hold it: the Kimpton Sawyer, the Westin Sacramento and the Hyatt Regency.
Which Sacramento hotels are on the river?
Three of the nine hotels are on the Sacramento River. The Delta King floats at the Old Sacramento Waterfront, Embassy Suites stands beside Tower Bridge at 100 Capitol Mall, and the Westin Sacramento has its own marina at 4800 Riverside Boulevard.
Which hotels are closest to Golden 1 Center?
The Kimpton Sawyer is at Downtown Commons, the plaza in front of Golden 1 Center, and its pool deck overlooks the arena. The Hyatt Centric is next to the arena at 1122 7th Street.
Which hotel is closest to the Sacramento convention center?
The Sheraton Grand is one block from the convention center, at 1230 J Street. The Citizen Hotel is five blocks away at 926 J Street.
Where can I stay in Old Sacramento?
The Delta King Hotel is moored at 1000 Front Street on the Old Sacramento Waterfront, with 44 rooms, the Pilothouse Restaurant and Delta Bar & Grill on board. Embassy Suites is across from Old Sacramento at the foot of Tower Bridge.
Which Sacramento hotels have a pool?
The Kimpton Sawyer has a heated pool on its third-floor deck, open to hotel guests from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Sheraton Grand and the Westin Sacramento have outdoor pools, and Embassy Suites has an indoor pool and a hot tub.
Which Sacramento hotels allow pets?
The Kimpton Sawyer takes pets of any size free of charge. The Citizen Hotel charges $50 per pet per night.
How far is Sacramento International Airport from downtown hotels?
Sacramento International Airport is 12 miles from downtown. A cab to the Kimpton Sawyer takes about 15 minutes and costs around $36 before tip. SacRT’s Route 142 express bus runs between the airport and downtown seven days a week.
How much is hotel tax in Sacramento?
The City of Sacramento charges a 12% transient occupancy tax on stays of 30 days or less. Hotels may also pass through a tourism marketing assessment, which rose to 4% in the downtown zone on August 1, 2026.
Affiliate Disclosure: Some links in this article are affiliate links. If you book through one, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
Article Updates
- October 9, 2026: Rewritten and expanded from two hotels to nine. Added the comparison table, the area guide, the FAQ and Booking.com reservation links, and updated restaurant, chef and menu details.
- October 8, 2024: First published.
