Well I just came back from my South Beach vacation. Who would have thought there would be a Hurricane Wilma affecting late-October travel plans?!?? The impetus for my trip was a business trip for the week of 10/24 - 10/28, but of course Wilma caused it to be cancelled. So the whole trip was off-kilter from the beginning. I am a Florida native, so I understand what hurricane damage looks like, and I also know it always looks worse in person than it does on TV. Still, I was surprised at the extent of damage in Broward County! It's scary enough to drive around Century Village in Pembroke Pines any average day (80-year-olds don't drive well!) but try it with all the traffic signals out! Ack! At least the Beaches received electrical power pretty quickly, but even so - the Holiday Inn was closed until a day or two before my arrival. Priceline had sent an email explaining that refunds would be available if my hotel didn't re-open in time for my stay. Anyway, I could go on and on about my trip, but the purpose of this post is to report back about the Holiday Inn property. It's not a really nice place; reminds me of Super8 but with a nicer hair dryer. Others have posted reviews on TripAdvisor that are completely accurate in my experience: kinda run-down, noisy near the pool, highly expensive poolside bar, jacuzzi that is too cold... I feel that I have paid my money for the location, not for the hotel itself in this case. On the positive side, the free parking was a blessing, and proximity to the beach couldn't be beat. Even the folks paying $500/night for the Ritz six blocks away were walking the same distance to the shoreline as I was from my hotel room. And the Outback Steakhouse that shares this city block is a nice convenience. Due to capacity, our first night was in a smoking room. It had a HORRIBLE rotten-food odor and I was too sleepy to stand up for my non-smoking request. When we woke up at 8 AM, we told them what room we wanted, as we could tell through the windows which rooms were empty, and moved post haste. I'm miffed because we could tell at 11PM on arrival that that room was empty, and it was still empty at 8 AM when we requested it, so they had no right to force me into a smoking room for the night. I'm a savvy traveler and can usually get such things righted, but not when I am soooooo tired. I learned for next time to phone the hotel directly on the day before my arrival to doubly guarantee a non-smoking room. We had two negative experiences with staff service. The first was their failure to supply a non-smoking room for the first night. A related problem was that they promised to send a person to spritz deodorizer in the room so we could tolerate it for the night, but nobody came. We fell asleep and didn't follow up except to depart that room in the morning. The second problem was that the remote control disappeared and it took two phone calls, a march down to the front desk, and 90 minutes of waiting to get a replacement. Then a follow-up phone call from the staff *six hours* after delivery of the remote, to be sure it was working properly. After six hours, the follow-up seemed worse than if they had left it alone. I asked one of the staff about the timeline for demolishing the hotel, and he said it is planned to close in April 2006 to make way for a high-rise condo building. Overall it was a nice trip with a few hurricane-related surprises. We didn't spend much time in the hotel room anyway, so I feel fine about the price we paid for it.
