Bahia Mar Fort Lauderdale Beach - a DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel — Hotel in Fort Lauderdale

Personally, we highly doubt we will be staying here again unless we cannot find another dog friendly hotel.

The room rate says it’s about $100, but you have to add the $40 resort fee, the $60 in taxes and fees per day, $50 parking per day, a $150 deposit for the room, and $100 for the dog. For one night. That’s $500 for extending the trip one night. Also, when extending the stay one night, so 3 nights in total, we were charged almost $400 in “deposits” for the room. The extended stay was planned through Priceline, so the reservation was in their system they said they just couldn’t combine them.

PROS - pet friendly, mostly wheelchair accessible, 2 free drinks per room per day, 2 free water bottles, an hour of bike rental, there’s a pool, gym, and beach access. I lived in south Florida all my life, I brought my bf down to Ft. Lauderdale for the first time and have been wanted to stay here since I was kid since we always parked across the street, a great nostalgia choice, or so we thought.

The customer service is sub par. From housekeeping knocking on our door every hour from 9:30/3:30, and usually with the do not disturb sign up. I was told by the front desk that just because the do not disturb sign is on, does NOT MEAN you can comfortably change in your room because housekeeping will walk in whenever they seem fit - no knock, just casually walking in. My boyfriend was out of his wheelchair half naked on the bed and I was changing when I locked eyes with a very confused custodian for the second time that morning. After this had happened a third time, we called down to the desk and they said OF COURSE we walk into your room whenever we please! Why is that surprising? I asked how that works when there’s an animal in the room, and she said it was never noted. I called before I made the reservation, after the reservation was placed, when we checked in AND we paid the pet fee, but they don’t note that there is an animal in the room. The front desk changed the subject, and the next two days we’ve still seen every housekeeper at our door every hour on the hour from 9-3 no matter the do not disturb. I asked the front desk to have the manager give us a call, no one ever did. as I write this at 9:59, we get another knock on the door asking if we’re checking out today

As far as room cleanliness, we found marks on the sheets, crayons and crumbs under the tables. Clearly the room had been wiped down, but it was not cleaned. If you question why we stripped the sheets before we left, that’s why! To make sure this wouldn’t happen to the next guests. When speaking to the front desk woman, it was clear the lack of training that goes on here. The best part is the bar, the two free drinks are great! Just no room service, they won’t answer the phone. I understand that you can walk down, but again we chose this hotel for the HANDICAP ACCESSIBILITY. The room for a wheelchair is great, they do not provide a shower chair although it is shown in all the photos. Asking the front desk woman, she kept going back to the dog that was already paid for. At that point, we stopped asking the front desk/ calling down if we needed anything. The women we interacted with on the phone and on the night shift were just so rude. After working in hospitality for the last 10 years, I’ve never seen so many people with a lack of will to work in this industry. Upon my exit, I asked again if a manager could reach out, preferably the gentleman who had “director” on his badge, the same gentleman who gave us the horrible sandwich initially. Always walking around the perimeter of the building on the phone but rarely interacting with guests. We are still waiting for the itemized list, but it looks like for our 3 night stay it was going to be around a $1200 stay not including food, and with no itemized list I can’t explain what all these extra charges are for. Again, I was very excited to stay at Bahia Mar, and knowing this is a Hilton Hotel I don’t believe we’ll be staying at either again. Someone...

Bottom line here: if you can afford to stay somewhere else, I highly recommend you do so. Not only are the rooms bad but the management is atrocious. I travel frequently for work and I usually stay at Hilton properties. This is the worst one I have ever stayed at. I was here for business, on the government rate. I am nearly certain the hotel was not at capacity but either way the room I got was in a building that was separate from the main tower. The room quality was essentially a Motel 6 with better paint and slightly nicer finish. The rooms smelled heavily of mold and the AC units were very dated. Mine rattled enough in the middle of the night to wake me up frequently and I sleep with earplugs. So, if you are in Fort Lauderdale on the government rate, I know for a fact that other hotels will put you in much nicer accommodations for the same price. I'm even a Gold member and that didn't seem to mean much here. I also think it is ridiculous they charge as much as they do for self parking, and a resort fee for simply having access to a pool and being able to walk across the street to the beach...ridiculous. Outside of the rooms I would also caution anyone from staying here as there seems to be either an issue with how they store receipts, or with staff giving receipts with your name, and room number to an associate. I discovered at checkout that someone had found out my name and room number and had been charging excessive amounts of room charges to my room from various places I actually never went to. For example, while I was off of the property on my first day there, someone charged about $500 worth to my room from either the pool bar or the restaurant on site. Again, I wasn't even on the property when this happened. In all I was charged about $1,300 in extra fraudulent charges during my stay. I would be fine if it was a mistake and the management was even remotely apologetic about this issue but they weren't. I called to dispute the charges and I was not only met with disbelief but they were borderline accusatory stating that because there was a signature that the transactions must be valid. As if someone couldn't have possibly forged a signature. I offered an example signature (based on a receipt I know I signed) to compare to the fraudulent one, and the manager still couldn't handle that concept. She informed me I needed to send an email listing all of the transactions that were fraudulent and all of them that were not. I did so. But instead of sending me any sort of confirmation that she received the email and the issue was being worked on she remained silent until I brought up the issue to corporate. Finally after they checked on the matter I received a reply, still not from the manager I had spoken with, but one of her underlings, with an updated receipt showing a refund. That's great I thought, problem resolved. Wrong, there were two new fraudulent charges on that receipt which were placed on my room after I had already check out of it. So, I sent another email. Again. No response or follow up from Cherlie. Eventually I saw one of the transactions was refunded but still the other was not, so I gave up with this place and called it in as fraud to my credit card company. Cherlie Julmisse is the worst manager I have ever had to deal with from any organization anywhere. I hope Hilton understands this. She absolutely lacks professionalism and any sort of customer service abilities. I have no idea how she has the position she does and how she continues to but I have seen crazier things in this world. Ultimately I would rather stay in my car on the side of the road than stay here again. I do have to say the one person that was great during my stay was the bartender...

This place has a lot of good qualities. However, it has far too many bad ones lying just underneath the surface the force me to have to give it a bad review. I came in to check in around 11:30 AM. I need a room whenever you’re ready since I’ve said it has a 4 PM check-in, which is annoying late in the day. I don’t know why it takes so long to clean her room if just check out is at 11AM?

So the trouble started when I came to check in and was told that we should have a room ready in a couple hours. I knew it was a possibility that our room when I’ll be ready until 4 PM. Exactly 3 other people were behind me in line and checked in just after me. Everyone of those people have the keys to the room by 2 PM. At 3:45 PM I asked about my room and it was still not ready. They told me they would call me and not to worry. I have been given a key to the premises, but that he did not work since I was not checked in. I have no access to the pool, was charged for parking, and have difficulty getting back onto the premises when I walked over to the beach while waiting.

At 4:30 PM I went back up to the reception and asked if my room is ready because they were already over the time promised, which is 4 PM exactly. I told him I’ve been waiting since before 1130AM. I was told “oh yeah, it seems your room has been ready.” so even though I left my number and asked several times no one called me even though they PROMISED that they would. This inattention to detail really ticked me off especially when no apology was given. So my experience here started with them stealing over half an hour from my time at the hotel.

The rest I’ll leave as a list.

(1) The food here is subpar and extremely overpriced. The MarKet has $3 pizza slices that are the only thing worth buying the rest include $5 cans of soda, $5 mini bags of Doritos, just ridiculously priced, price gouging more like it.

(2) The skywalk is a nice idea but it’s a long walk and no wheelchair accessibility to most areas.

(3) There’s no way to call reception or housekeeping. The phone ringing off the hook, but no one will pick up.

(4) They close the skywalk at 9 PM so if you wanna take a stroll in the Beach area in the evening, they will lock you out and then the only way to get back to cross a very dangerous street with no lights for walkers.

(5) Most of their food choices are open and close within a couple of hours so you better have your timing just right. The only place that’s open all day is there bar in there main lobby. However, that place is extremely packed and I’ll have one person usually working there so it will take forever and of course everything is extremely over priced.

(6) The pool area isn’t too bad but the pool is way too small for all the guests in the hotel. Too many kids splashing water everywhere.

(7) The Las Olas Strip is JUST outside of walking distance due to the intense Florida heat so you HAVE to Uber back and forth all day and a hotel like this should offer a shuttle service to and from.

(8) The rooms are pretty plane but do the job. However the bathroom is tiny and the nozzle in the bath tub was nearly impossible to get working.

Overall I would give this place a 2 because it really has a lot of potential and could be a great hotel if it just fixed a few of these issues. The staff was very friendly and except for reception, they tried...