Stay Report: InterContinental Miami (Miami - January 2016)

Stay Report: InterContinental Miami 
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In planning a vacation in Miami, the place to stay is on or near South Beach.  In looking for a hotel near South Beach, I found a good deal at the Intercontinental Miami.  The hotel is located across the bay from South Beach thus provided great views.  Overall, it’s a very nice hotel with lots of amenities and is always crowded; and being that crowded seems to sometimes overwhelm the hotel.

The hotel itself is very large and sits at the edge of the water.  The hotel is connected to a pedestrian park and walkway that stretches along the waterfront and leads to a shopping mall.  The downtown location of the hotel makes it very convenient to access shops and services.  The entrance to the hotel is to on the side street, so that makes the entrance very crowded.  Additionally, all the parking is valet-parking as self-parking at the hotel is not available.  Given that valet is the only option, the hotel should be a bit better at the parking situation; there were delays on both the drop-off and pick up of the car.  Once you drop off your car, you walk up the steps into the lobby.

The lobby of the hotel is very grandiose and large, and is a cross between lobby and a lounge.  As you enter into the lobby, straight ahead are chairs and couches to lounge and relax.  The chairs are part of the lobby as well as part of the bar which is behind the chairs, and the bar has a DJ playing live music in the lobby.  On the left hand side down the hall is the concierge desk, the check-in desks, the ‘business center’, as well as the guest elevators.  On the right hand side down the hall is the coffee shop (in-house Starbucks), a FedEx center, the hotel restaurants, as well as access to the meeting rooms.  Because of all the services, the lobby is a hub of activity for the hotel and constantly seemed full of people. 

At the check-in desks, there were long lines for both checking-in as well as checking-out.  Even though check-in time is at 2pm, when we arrived at 3pm our room was not ready.  This apparently happened to a lot of people as I noticed many instances of this occurring in my short stay.  The hotel was nice and provided some nice compensation, but it took almost 3.5 hours after check-in for us to receive our room.  The hotel acts like a resort, and similar to a resort they have a mandatory resort fee.  The fee covers the following: internet access, access to the sauna, the fitness center, the pool, and many other amenities.  While the amenities were nice and really large, I am not sure the fee was justified as internationally these amenities are provided without the fee. 

After finally receiving our key we went to our room and this is where the hotel excels.  The room was massive and EXTREMELY spacious.  As you entered into the room, you went down a long hallway to get into the room.  The entrance to the bathroom was in this hallway, and at the end of the hallway was a nook for the coffee maker.  The room itself was very spacious with 2 double beds, a night stand in between, a TV stand with drawers underneath, a desk, plus a chair next to the window.  Even with all the items, the room felt very open and large and there was plenty of room to move around.  The beds were also spacious and comfortable and provided a nice and relaxing sleep.  There were plenty of outlets all around the room to charge all the electronic devices.   Right next to the bed were switches which would automatically bring down the shades to make the room darker, as there were windows which stretched along the wall and provided a nice view of the sea and the city.

The bathroom was equally large and spacious.  As you entered into the bathroom, straight ahead was the sink while to the right, along the wall, was the closet and a shelf that housed towels and other bathroom items.  The sink itself was also very big, and next to the sink was the toilet and next to that was the tub.  The bathtub had a shower hooked onto it that seemed like two individual showerheads put together – so they provided an alright shower; and again the water pressure was not that good.

Given I was only there for a short time, I was not able to experience all of the hotel’s facilities.  The facilities I did experience were the wifi and the business center.  The wifi was decent and provided good speed for basic internet browsing (considering it was part of the ‘resort fee’, I expected faster speeds).  The business center was located across from the check-in desks, and were basically two rooms each with a Mac computer and a printer (there was a FedEx shop located on the other side of the lobby).  The hotel had other facilities which I was not able to experience, including the outdoor pool, the fitness center, the sauna or the spa.

Overall, the Intercontinental is a nice hotel that is conveniently located downtown and provides a nice spacious room.  The parking rate is a bit high, and chaotic; not sure if the resort fee is worth it; and the check-in seems a bit chaotic as well.  The hotel does provide a lot of amenities and great views.