The Royal Palms — Hotel in Fort Lauderdale

The location of this spot is 5 stars. However I have to give the rooms/service 2 stars. The staff of this resort often bounce between various establishments on Breakers Ave, which means the front desk is often not staffed and locked, and to request help you press a Ring doorbell and it is very difficult to hear the person on the other end (which I did tell them it was hard to hear them). When we checked in, the worker walked us to our room, which I’m still not sure if that was customary or because of our door. When we got to our room, our door would not open, and the staff member said “you have to pull up on the handle and pull.” Obviously there was a problem with the door that staff had known about prior to our arrival. A few days later, I attempted to get into our room and the door was jammed-would not open. I got a housekeeping staff member who told me “someone will come and check” and walked away, I assumed she was calling someone so I waited by my door for a few minutes, but nobody came. I then went to the front desk, which had nobody inside and doors were locked. So I pressed the Ring doorbell and tried explaining my situation to a box on the wall-with music and loud conversations 5 feet away at the pool this was very frustrating. I still am not sure what they said on the Ring, so I had to call a number on Google to try and get ahold of someone. They did tell me they’ll “send someone over” and sent Arnold, who is amazing and very helpful! Arnold made new keys and walked me to my room, but the keys weren’t the problem-the door was. So Arnold told me he had to call an engineer to fix our door. Luckily I was just headed to the beach so this wasn’t as stressful as it could have been, but still a significant inconvenience and took decent time away from the beach. However had I needed to catch a flight, this would’ve been very significant of an issue. Either way, I was hoping to be compensated in some form, even a drink credit or breakfast discount for our troubles. It was evident that the door troubles were known about and present before our stay. Nothing was offered to us, but regardless we enjoyed our time minus a few room issues-the lights flickered and the bed was majorly uncomfortable. I don’t think I would stay here again, but Breakers Ave is a very cute little place and the breakfast spot up the...

My experience here was terrible seeing as i am a black female. I visited this hotel for about a week with my friends; and we were treated as if we were not welcome and didn't belong. Our group was a mix of male and female but the only common denominator between us all was that we were BLACK. The groundsman Juan Carlos or ''JayCee'' as he called himself was the one making sure we felt unwelcome. He proceeding to harrass us daily; stating that residents of the hotel were complaining that ''some kind of people are hanging around in the public pool and they knew we could not be paying to be there'' ; what struck us was the fact that the only difference between us and the ''hypothetical complaining residents'' was that we were black and they were not. Juan Carlos was a very angry,and racist man who proceeded to shout things at us like '' do u have degrees because the kind of car ur little friend drives says no'' ; '' u type of people need to stay in the front pool and not the secluded one at the back of the hotel.'' ; '' i dont care if you don't like how or what i'm saying but i am the one who says who stays and who goes'' ; ''i'm sorry but you type of people dont belong and if ur little friend doesn't leave then u all will leave escorted out by police'' , at this point we were all so upset and felt so unwanted that we decided to leave. The thing is the other workers had no issue with us and contradicted every excuse that this JayCee made up to try and get us to not feel welcome. We are outraged and feel we have been treated unfairly simply due to the colour of our skin. When we tried to address his racism he responded '' i am latino so no one will believe what you are trying to say'' and he also said ''your little race cards wont work so i dont care how you feel about this situation if you feel unwanted thats because you are. '' I dont believe anyone should have to experience this kind of treatment and i feel so abused and embarassed about how we were treated. Not to mention the fact it is a gay hotel and should be way more open to people of all types. I am very dissappointed and hope something will be done about this situation. Now we understand clearly why no other african-american or west indian people were seen at the hotel; because they sure made it clear we weren't...

This was my third stay same time of year, three years in a row. I have seen it decline with each visit. The first year I was impressed. My second visit last year was not good with poor housekeeping service and an overall lack of management. I was offered several nights free on a future visit to give it another try. Since my first visit was good I was willing. Well, I hate to say it has gotten worse. Upon check in the type of room I reserved and had a confirmation for was not available and would not be available for my stay. Next I was escorted to my room by the staff only to see that that room was already occupied, back to the front desk. Once a room was located they keys did not work multiple times. Ok chalk that up to whatever. With that out of the way other things became apparent. Housekeeping again is non-existent. On my first full day I had to hunt down house keeping for towels and to clean at 4 in the afternoon. The hotel contracts out to a third party to do it's housekeeping so there is no control by the hotel how this is carried out and I was told "they were just busy" as the reason for the delay. Well, yes it is during the New Year's holiday season and I would hope a resort in southern Florida is busy! You staff up accordingly. Towels at the pool were no where to be found. 5 or 6 towels would appear and then quickly disappear. The hotel allows anyone in the neighborhood to use the pool at no charge. So locals come in and will camp out on the best lounge chairs all day without paying, but the paying guests are either out of luck or relegated to the back pool. I raised this as a problem last year and as I can see nothing has changed. If you like the "hey girl" crowd you will love it. The landscape on the around the outside of the hotel has trash in the beds that was never there or was at least cleaned up in the past several years. A lot of the amenities that impressed my on my first visit have disappeared. It's a shame that a really cool space is not being managed well and is slipping away. I for one will not...