Los Angeles

Four of the five are inside the city limits, and the one that is not turns out to be the best pick here for business travelers.

Three hotels, and the choice comes down to whether you need a full conference floor or just a quiet desk and a short walk to Avenue of the Stars.

The five picks are ranked by how far you actually walk to the Figueroa entrance, with meeting space breaking the ties between the close ones.

The trade with LAX hotels is meeting space and a fast exit against a long haul into Downtown, and this compares five of them on both counts.

Four picks, from a Fairmont on Avenue of the Stars to mid-range rooms on the boundary streets, with notes on which ones let you skip the car.

Cheap in LA almost always means a trade somewhere, so each pick names what you give up and what you keep, starting with Metro access.

Culver City's hotel stock is thinner than its studio list suggests, so these four are mostly budget rooms, ranked by what you can walk to.

Downtown covers a lot of ground and the block matters, so each of the five is placed against Grand, Figueroa, and the walk to the arena.

Plenty of LA boutiques talk about their green credentials without publishing anything, which is why this list is only five hotels long.

Eco credentials in LA skew luxury, so the useful question is which certified hotels stay under the city's mid-range line, and five of them do.

A real pool and a serious water program can coexist, and these five show what that looks like, from above Sunset to the sand in Santa Monica.

El Segundo trades airport noise for a quiet grid, and the ranking lets you weigh eco credentials against a shorter walk to the Douglas Street campuses.

Charging is not always at the hotel itself, and some of these send you to a garage down the block, worth knowing before you pull in on a low battery.

Green Key is rare enough here that the full list runs to fifteen hotels, and it leans toward airport Best Westerns rather than the boutiques you'd expect.

The useful split is by sub-brand, since a Conrad and a Hampton Inn in the same city are built for completely different trips.

The closest pick is essentially on the Boulevard, which is either the point of your trip or the thing that keeps you up, so the ranking gives you both ends.

Value here means what you get for the rate rather than the lowest rate, which is how a Sunset Strip landmark lands next to a Hollywood apartment hotel.

What you're really buying here is late-night food and a rail station within ten minutes, and the five picks split cleanly into mid-range and upscale.

These five span Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Downtown, so the real decision is which side of town you want to be stuck on when plans move.

The tier matters less than most people assume, and this explains what separates a Gold from a Certified before you let the plaque pick your hotel.

Everything here is apartment-style rather than a conventional hotel, which is what a month in LA actually calls for once you need a kitchen.

Los Feliz itself has almost no hotel stock, so the closest picks are down on Sunset, a short hop from the Greek Theatre and the Griffith Park trailheads.

The waterfront rooms are the reason to book here and only some of these have one, so check the harbor position before the star rating.

Ten-plus brands under one loyalty program means the badge on the door tells you more about the room than the star rating does.