Stay elsewhere if you don't want to experience safety hazards
Oct 29, 2024 30nyz
I stayed at the 1 Hotel South Beach as part of a four-day girls' trip this past weekend. Suffice to say, our experience was disappointing and at times unsafe due to negligence on the part of the hotel, which led to me cutting both of my feet on broken glass in our hotel room.
As someone who appreciates thorough hotel reviews, and factors other…
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I stayed at the 1 Hotel South Beach as part of a four-day girls' trip this past weekend. Suffice to say, our experience was disappointing and at times unsafe due to negligence on the part of the hotel, which led to me cutting both of my feet on broken glass in our hotel room.
As someone who appreciates thorough hotel reviews, and factors other guests' experiences in when deciding where to stay on vacation, I thought I'd expand on our experience below.
1. Allergy hazards
My friend who booked the stay had communicated with the hotel ahead of time that there was an allergy in our group, and she asked to confirm that none of the toiletries contained lavender oil, which the hotel confirmed. We arrived to see that every single toiletry contained lavender oil--it was clearly labeled on the front of each product. We went back and forth with the hotel to ask for replacements--the hotel's initial solution was to tell us that they did not carry lavender-free toiletries (they did in the giftshop, by the same brand) and to remove all toiletries from the room. They eventually brought us toiletries from Walgreens at 2am.
2. Broken glass on the floor of our room
After we returned from dinner the first night of our stay, I cut my foot in three places from stepping in broken shards of glass. It's not clear to me whether the glass was tracked in by cleaning staff, turndown service, or someone else, but the glass had not been in the room prior to us leaving for dinner. The shards were in a highly trafficked area inside the entrance to our room, and we would have noticed it/stepped in it prior to heading out had it been on the floor. Upon closer examination, we noticed *multiple* pieces of glass on the floor, ranging from tiny shards to larger, jagged pieces. As we came back to a room without soap, there was no way for us to clean the blood smeared across my foot and the floor until security came.
3. Poor service
The prior-mentioned issues aside, there were numerous issues with service across the weekend: blankets the turndown service stripped from the bed and left balled and thrown in the closet, harried and curt waitstaff in the lobby cafe, being reprimanded for using an empty section of the gym by staff, and our room service items missing components of the meal, just to name a few.
The only thing the hotel was attentive about was having their Loss Prevention team (basically the team in place to prevent us from suing for the broken glass/cut foot) call us repeatedly throughout the day, including early enough to wake us up one morning. Clearly, they were more concerned about protecting themselves from any damages than they were about making up for not only a poor--but an incredibly hazardous--stay.
4. Cleanliness of the room
While the beds were clean and the counter surfaces were clean, when we looked closely at the floor, it was dirty, sticky, and covered in glass in the corners of the room: beyond the glass I'd stepped in, we found glass beneath the curtains by the closet in the entryway, as well as on the opposite side of the floor, under the minibar area.
While the hotel did end up comping part of our stay, in our opinion, given the seriousness and volume of the issues we confronted, the gesture was far from sufficient.
There are a number of quality hotels nearby in South Beach, and I'd recommend staying in any one of the other hotels (i.e., the W, the Setai, etc) if one expects to experience even a modicum of service that should be a given when staying at a premium hotel--just don't expect that here.
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