Miami is a hotel heaven, ceaselessly tempting and teasing winter-weary New Yorkers with an ever-expanding surfeit of surfside and city-center stays. The past few months have been no exception, with boutique and bigger-brand properties arriving in time for December’s Art Basel, and more set to launch in the months just after. Here, a look at the best new and soon-to-open spots, which offer something for every type of fun-and-sun-seeking traveler.
AC Hotel by Marriott Miami Beach
A high-style, lower-price Spanish outfit recently acquired by Marriott, AC will make its American debut in April with this 150-room new-build property on Collins Avenue, just across from the beach.
Like Starwood’s Aloft, AC focuses on engaging communal spaces. In Miami, this means turning the AC Lounge into a hub of activity, with drinks and small plates created in collaboration with local vendors; bartenders, meanwhile, have been trained to act as concierge-style insider city guides.
Open to guests, visitors and Miami Beach residents alike, the eighth-floor rooftop pool will make a similar splash on the South Floridian social scene with its ocean views.
Shelborne Wyndham Grand South Beach
Originally built in 1940 and updated in the ‘50s by the master of Miami Modern, Morris Lapidus, this Collins Avenue icon reopened in September following a $90 million, 14-month renovation and restoration.
Reimagined by rising hospitality-design specialist Meg Sharpe and aesthetic arbiter Richard Mishaan, the 200-room property boasts a restaurant by sushi star Masaharu Morimoto; a spa with products from local skin-care guru Dr. Oscar Hevia; and an epically scaled pool, whose floating beach chairs, roving drinks cart and private cabanas are already seeing plenty of action.
Metropolitan by COMO, Miami Beach
This 74-room stay opened in a 1930s art deco landmark in June, after a six-month soft opening. Its position at 24th Street, a bit north of South Beach’s bustle and buzz, gives the place — designed in soothing tones of mint green, pale gray and white by award-winning Milan architect Paola Navone — the feeling of a quiet retreat.
The vibe continues at its serene, guest-only beachside pool and its eighth-floor rooftop spa, where an al fresco hydrotherapy pool overlooking the ocean complements the four windowed treatment rooms. The hotel is the first US satellite of the ultraluxe, Singapore-based COMO resort group.
But Metropolitan keeps Miami in focus with a Floridian seafood-focused restaurant, a juice bar and the Gin Club, featuring cocktails made from 30 varieties of the eponymous spirit.
Miami Beach Edition
Beyond the 294 rooms, suites and bungalows designed by interiors masters Yabu Pushelberg, the Edition boasts a bowling alley, an ice-skating rink, a nightclub with state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems, and a restaurant from multi-Michelin-starred Jean-Georges Vongerichten. It also claims the only lobby bar in Miami Beach with ocean views.
Outside sit two pools, each with its own bar and cabanas, and 70,000 square feet of beach.
1 Hotel South Beach
Starwood founder Barry Sternlicht will stage his hotel reemergence with the February 2015 arrival of this 426-room spot, the first iteration of a new eco-conscious brand rooted in the natural world.
Occupying the 17-story Roney Plaza, a block-long 1925 art deco landmark (which formerly housed the Gansevoort Hotel Miami), the 1 has much to brag about: rooms averaging 700 square feet, farm-to-table food from Tom Colicchio, the city’s largest rooftop pool and the longest stretch of beach of any South Beach hotel.
Its green-but-glam eco aspects include living walls, reclaimed wood interiors, hemp-filled mattresses and a fleet of chauffeured Teslas.
Aloft Hotel South Beach
With this March 2015 debut, Starwood will extend Aloft (its contemporary-casual, relatively wallet-friendly brand) into resort territory.
The hotel will particularly promote its highly social public spaces (including an eatery from Philly-based restauranteur Stephen Starr called The Continental), designed to foster easy interaction between guests.
The modern style of the 235 loftlike rooms incorporates art deco and nautical touches, while the hotel’s location — on the southern tip of Lake Pancoast, in the middle of the narrow island that is Miami Beach — provides a surprising alternative to more typical beachfront stays. (From $259; 2360 Collins Ave., starwoodhotels.com)
Thompson Miami Beach
London-based designer Martin Brudnizki handled the interiors, inspired by Miami’s 1950s glam style. Local star chef Michelle Bernstein cooked up the Floridian brasserie and mixologist Julio Cabrera created the cocktails.
The hotel’s open-air spa, two pools and lush landscaping all have their draws. But the most unique element of the hotel may be its 1930s House, a Spanish-inspired vintage bungalow that Thompson moved to the hotel, where it now serves as a hideaway-cum-clubhouse.
Nautilus, a SIXTY Hotel
This Morris Lapidus-designed Collins Avenue icon will come out of its shell in March, after a multimillion-dollar renovation and restoration overseen by internationally renowned Miami firm Arquitectonica.
The first new project from the co-founders of Thompson Hotels since they sold that brand and launched SIXTY last year, Nautilus evokes the streamlined, mid-20th-century spirit of Lapidus’s original design, adding a contemporary clubhouse vibe for which SIXTY is becoming known.
Beyond 250 rooms and suites — many with sweeping ocean views — you’ll find a new restaurant with outdoor seating, a lobby lounge, a garden, an outdoor pool with a bar, and direct beach access plus surfside food and drink service.