Hotel Breakwater

We recently stayed the the Hotel Breakwater at the end of September. The hotel was recommended to us by a Virgin Holidays travel agent who spoke highly of the establishment. This was our first time in Miami South Beach so we wanted to stay somewhere special. We enjoyed our stay with very little issues. The interior of the hotel is dated however, and the mattress was old and worn! The room did smell of damp but we could see through this as the location is great. However, upon checkout and unknown to us, the guy on reception charged the full price (£400 in total) of our stay to our personal credit card when the charge for the stay should have been claimed from Virgin Holidays as part of our package holiday. (So we paid twice) We didn’t challenge this cost for a few days due to the fact we believed it may be some sort of “holding fee” for any gratuities placed upon the room. We were shocked to then see this large amount of money taken from our credit account. Virgin Holidays told us that the hotel should not of done this and we should contact the hotel for a refund. After several attempts to make contact with the hotel, they never responded and ignored all our emails. Virgin Holidays have also attempted to contact the hotel to get them to issue a refund, with no resolution or response. I find it really disappointing and disrespectful that the hotel management have chosen not to respond to our request for a resolution to amicably sort out this issue. Reading other reviews on here, it looks like this isn’t the first time errors have been made by the hotel in over charging guests! Virgin Holidays have had to now resolve this issue thankfully after 3 weeks of nothing from the hotel management. I’m a very fair reviewer, I’ve never had to write a review like this before, but the severity of this issue and the stress it has caused shouldn’t be overlooked. I would recommend to anyone, pick a different hotel! DO NOT STAY AT THIS HOTEL. Read less

In 35 years of coming to this incredibly city, we have never experienced such disgusting accommodation and totally incompetent management. We booked a 4 night mid-week stay at The Hotel Breakwater. Firstly, this is not as advertised, it is not a boutique hotel and the images of the pool area are misleading. To say that it’s shabby, run down would be an understatement. I have seen cleaner and deeper public fountains in and around Miami. This pool looked and smelt as if no care or cleaning had been done. And forget about relaxing there… it is impossible as they have the loudest generators I have ever heard running 24/7… in fact my wife thought at first that an emergency helicopter was about to land. It is impossible to relax there. The images are so mis-leading. At 1.30am one morning we heard the loudest banging, the about 5 minutes of sawing… When we called down to security, they investigated and the noise stopped. 20 minutes later security very kindly called us to wake us up again to tell us the noise had stopped. Idiot. Reception explained that this had been due to maintenance but this excuse was then retracted by the GM. The next day the hotel upgraded us to a non-existent room…. When we came back down the receptionist was looking a little worried as our old room AND the new room my wife was previously shown and agreed on had been sold. So we now didn’t have a room with two more nights to stay, for which we paid for. A few angry moments and some frantic calling and the reception team had managed to find a room and bought a small bed for our daughter to sleep on. Our room had a pull out sofa so rather than sleep on the dodgy old looking wooden bed we started to make the pull out bed… and that’s when we discovered the state of the disgusting mattress that the hotel expected our daughter to sleep on. See images. They made that bed for us, they would have seen the state of the mattress..,and yet they expected someone to sleep on it? So I dragged the mattress back to reception where I left it on display there. I’ve seen matrasses like this before, but usually on the side of streets, or in murder scenes. To be fair the reception team were as shocked as we were.. and apologetic and assured us we would be comped so nights for the inconvenience. We were ‘comped’,a breakfast at The News Cafe as a way of an apology. When we got there we were told it was on their restrictive menu and our menus were immediately removed…. Not much of an apology. We paid for a proper breakfast. We complained to every one, but no one was getting back to us. In desperation I spoke with the GM at their sister hostel, The Victor… who looked so shocked and we felt was truly sorry for the incompetence. And organised a meeting with the GM at the Breakwater. I have to say that encounter was a complete waste of time, and it soon became apparent why this once iconic hotel was now a disgusting, run down shadow of what it had been. TheBreakwater GM was so blasé, so unhelpful, and his lack of understanding a would suggest that complaints like this are not uncommon. His team really did feel for us though and continued to be apologetic. Shame the GM couldn’t man up and take responsibility for his disgusting, shameful hotel. We were told this would be sorted out by Monday at 12pm… and in true character of this hotel, we have not received any form of communication or offer of compensation (except for a lunch at the Versace restaurant, which they knew full well we could do as we were leaving) from the incompetent team at The Breakwater. This in it’s self is not unusual as we would have to chase several times to get a response whilst booking.. Please, if you are considering this hotel, DO NOT BOOK. There are other hotels, that are cleaner, quieter and where the management team respect the fact that they are working in the hospitality business and welcome their guests and perhaps have pride in their hotel. Some hotel pros even use mattresses that haven’t had a hard life in the adult film industry. The Breakwater is not one of them Read less