Nobu Hotel Miami Beach — Hotel in Miami Beach

I wish I could give this hotel 0 stars. It was the worst hotel I’ve stayed at in my entire life. Everything from A-Z was wrong. I don’t even know where to start.

I arrived and they told me that due to covid there is no room service and no room cleaning services. That is completely understandable, but I wish I would have been informed of that before booking (which was only a few days before) so that I could make better decisions. They promised me that since I was staying for a long time they would clean my room 3 times during the 11 day stay (That never happened).

My phone was broken when I arrived, I tried to call from my cell phone for over an hour no one answered at the front desk. We went downstairs and no one was there to help us. When I finally spoke to someone the next morning, they told me a manager would contact me. It never happened. I went back the next day and finally was able to speak with a manager, I explained to him one of our guests had severe asthma and the dust was bad in the room, he promised to send someone to vacuum and that we would be provided fresh towels every day. That never happened. Towels continued to pile up in the bathroom, smelling. Every time we needed new towels it would take 1 hour for the front desk to answer the phone, or sometime multiple calls because it would just hang up. When they finally answered it would take another hour to get towels to the room. They never took the old towels away. Sometimes we would request other things and never even receive them.

Since they never cleaned our room on the 3 days as scheduled, our sheets were filthy. By the 9th day we requested a sheet change because we realized they weren’t cleaning the room as promised. The house keeping person left the sheets in the room for us to change them ourselves !! When I got back and saw this, I called to let them know this is unacceptable and asked for them to come change the sheets. We left the room, when we came back, we saw that only the bottom sheet was changed, the comforter and pillow cases were still dirty and stained. I complained to the manager again the next day, and he promised a proper sheet change. Again, the sheets were not changed when we returned that night. I called down and they agreed to let me sleep in a different room since it was my LAST NIGHT and the housekeeping was already gone.

Also, there was only 2 pillows on the bed when we arrived. Seems trivial but I expect more if I’m paying for a 5 star hotel. The food at Malibu Farm restaurant was disgusting. I got sick the 2nd time I ate there. And on our last day, we tried to go to the beach at 2pm, the chair guy was so rude, he refused to put chairs on the beach for us since he was alone and had reached “the limit of chairs he can put by himself”. We offered to help and he refused and told us we need to wait. (The beach was empty btw, as all the people from the holidays were already gone). When his coworker came back, they still refused to put chairs out because they were closing soon (It was 3pm and they only close at 5pm).

Finally, after complaining multiple times to the manager, he agreed to remove the resort fee of 35$ per day from our bill. I confirmed on check out that the resort fee was removed. Once I got home I realized that my card had been changed twice, once for the full stay, and a second change of 400$. I called the hotel and found out that they changed me the resort fees on a separate bill! They finally reimbursed me for them after arguing, and when I asked for additional compensation for the entirety of my horrible stay, the manager basically told me, I don’t really care because you’ve already paid and checked out.

TRUST ME, DO NOT STAY HERE. IT IS BY FAR THE WORST HOTEL I’VE EVER STAYED AT. I wouldn’t even go back if...

We stayed at the Nobu Hotel over the July 4th long weekend. While we did enjoy our time, there were a few things that made us feel uncomfortable and unwelcome and we will likely not return to this hotel if we go back to Miami.

The good: -The face-to-face interactions we had with everyone was truly the wow factor. A special shoutout goes to Mattia and Kimberly at the pool/beach who made our visit extra special! They were the best part of the trip. -the in-room dining and poolside bar were GREAT! We had GREAT meals at both and very fun drinks. Ask for the coconut water in the coconut - such a wow factor and delicious. The two dine-in restaurants were frankly not impressive, but we loved the other options. -the Nobu-specific pool is great! Beautiful, small, and great service. They don't have enough umbrellas for everyone, so come early on busy days! -great soundproofing. We never heard other guests, and I'm sure there were people coming back late night. -Fun little freebies here and there at the pool (like fresh watermelon and coconut water) was a nice treat.

The Bad: They have some sort of tablet system in the room for customer requests like in-room dining and housekeeping requests but it seems to be semi-functioning. We tried to request firmer pillows but the tablet wouldn't let us put in our preference for the type of pillow (feather or foam). We called the housekeeping line, who then told us the tablet doesn't work...okay...why is it there then? Anyway, we still didn't even get our pillows that night and had to request them two more times the next days. When we did get them, we didn't feel any difference in firmness which was very disappointing. We stuck to their texting request system for the rest of the trip and that worked, but then take the non functioning tablet out of the way if there's a better alternative? There were a lot of details like that (things like giving us the wrong toiletries after clarifying in-person multiple times) that were unexpectedly missing for the price and quality of the hotel. -Unfortunately, we found something black growing in our sink faucet. Not surprising for a hotel, but it was so prolific that it was falling into the sink...not appropriate for the quality. -There seemed to be multiple elevators out or maybe too many people booked at the hotel (since they kept running out of things like water bottles). The wait times for the elevators was unbearably long, and multiple guests said the same thing to us. -On our last night, we were shockingly woken up someone speaking on the intercom system at 1:20 AM. It seemed like they were about to announce an emergency/evacuation, then someone whispered to the announcer, then they said it was a false alarm. False alarm or not, it scared us pretty badly. For a brief second, we were picturing what to grab and how to run out of the hotel in case it was all on fire! My husband was unable to go back to sleep for 3 hours because of the adrenaline, and we had to leave for an early flight! When we checked out, I mentioned how upsetting and scary that was for us to the front desk - he just kind of laughed and said it was a mistake the engineers made while messing around!! No apology, no concessions...absolutely no empathy for the chaos their mistake caused. That situation alone ruined all of the good experiences we had at the hotel - honestly, we were trying hard to overlook all of the things I mentioned above and would've left a good review if not for this last thing that left such a sour taste in our mouth. Worst of all, this situation reflects a general lack of care from management expressed in other reviews - so I don't expect this to change....

We decided to stay at Nobu Miami Beach because our travel agent said it’s a beautiful property and will be perfect for relaxing and dining. I did read all the recent reviews and saw that there were many complaints about the service. We still decided to take a punt and stay there, thinking that even if the service is really bad, we can complain and they’ll try and fix it. We were wrong!

I’ll start with the positives: Nobu hotel is undoubtedly a beautiful property, very clean and well-maintained. There are three swimming pools and there’s access to the beach. There are three restaurants on the premises - cafe Inez (like Starbucks but three times the price), Malibu Farms (terrible service and average food), and Nobu (amazing on all levels). Our room was very spacious and clean, we were very pleased with it.

Now, onto the letdowns: It’s virtually impossible to get hold of guest services. Rooms don’t get cleaned because of COVID but nobody comes/calls to check if you need trash taken out, more towels, or more coffee pods. We even went downstairs to the guest services, waited in a huge line to ask someone to bring us pods but nobody ever turned up. We called up, waited on the line for an eternity for someone to speak to, finally we did, they reassured us that someone will be up there within an hour but nobody ever came. I heard some rumblings in the corridor and saw that other rooms were being cleaned so I asked for coffee pods from the cleaning staff, paid them $5 and they gave me 4 pods. They also took the trash out and gave me fresh towels. It was impossible getting any of this done through guest services because nobody ever came.

Beach - beautiful but the loungers and food/drinks service is badly run, there are just not enough staff members by the looks of it. We waited for 2 hours before approaching someone for food and drinks and he quickly said that this is not his area and he’ll send someone. He never did. We finally found another staff member, he took our order and it took about an hour for the food to get to us and another hour after for drinks. Umbrellas - they cost $35, which is a flat rate, doesn’t matter if you want it for an hour or the whole day. The girl in charge of reserving them had a very surly attitude: when I questioned the price (because we pay a resort fee of $35 daily) she just said “if you don’t like it, don’t take it”. Ok, fine. It was very sunny and hot so we took it and waited another 20 mins for someone to come and help to put it up. We had to waive them down, otherwise nothing would have been done. So moral of the story is, take initiative, don’t wait around for someone to approach you.

Pool service was actually pretty good, maybe because it was on a Monday.

Malibu Farm: at check in, we were told that we can just turn up and there are reservations but we should be fine to just walk in and grab something or a table. So we tried doing this. It was 11.30, lots of empty tables. The lady at the front was incredulous “what, you just expect to get seated? Do you know that we’re booked 2 weeks in advance? We are very busy and fully booked”. Okay. So we walked away. It was just such an arrogant attitude, no “sorry, let me see what I can do” etc.

Nobu - fantastic service and great food as always! So happy we made the reservation a couple of weeks in advance.

So overall, I can’t say that it was a great stay, the service was just non-existent and I see now that all the recent reviews are true. Complaining just doesn’t get you anywhere because...