Today, Hotels Week is all about getting a deal, or not. With the help of our intern, Nicolas Bogdan, we're comparing deluxe hotels in three categories—Beach, Downtown, and Boutique—to good budget friendlier options. Notice we said 'budget friendlier' and not 'cheap.' The difference is this is Miami, the budget hotels still have to be great places, and still may not be 'cheap' but are at least a hell of a lot less than the deluxe joints. And now, Round 1: Beach Hotels.
At about $180 a night through the hotel's website, the Hotel Nash is a bargain for Miami Beach. In recent memory it operated as the Lords Hotel, a "gay oriented" hotel for which it was given a splashy makeover, including a bar entirely in gold tile, a polar-bear-with-beach-ball statue and basically the multi-prismatic look you see here. They've dropped the gay thing, put a smiling hetero couple on the website, changed it back to the Nash name, and now it's "everybody oriented" apparently. The Nash is in the middle of South Beach, a block away from the ocean on Collins Avenue.
Rooms at the famous Setai go for $925 a night, and that's the price from Expedia! The yelp reviews, coming in at 4.5 stars, are over the top. The hotel has great ocean views, is actually directly on the ocean, killer restaurants, and an exotic asian decor. Interestingly, like the Nash, it has three pools in a row, the main difference being the Setai's pools are actual pools, and the Nash's are about the size of large hot tubs. Still, for almost a grand a night, what else do you expect?
· Hotels Week 2014 coverage [Curbed Miami]