Hotel Review: aloft South Beach

Last weekend Wodapalooza was taking place in Miami. For those of you that don’t know Wodapalooza is a fitness expo and Crossfit competition featuring many of the top Crossfit Games athletes in the world. On Wednesday night we decided we wanted to go leaving Saturday morning (the Penguins were playing the Lightning in Tampa Friday night) and coming back Sunday afternoon. Since the trip was such short notice we had no one to watch our puppy Grace, so the hotel had to be pet-friendly. aloft hotels advertise that they’re pet-friendly, and they are part of the Starwood Preferred Guest network, which I recently qualified for Gold Status meaning we should get a room upgrade upon arrival and 4:00 PM checkout. aloft South Beach is right off Collins Avenue not near the W Hotel.

Aloft South Beach King Room via aLoft South Beach

The drive was easy enough, we went to the expo with Grace for a couple hours meeting some of the athletes that we admired and had seen on the Crossfit games on TV.

Mallory and the Smith Brothers – Ben Smith in the blue shirt won the 2015 Crossfit Games

Peter, Mallory and Grace with Noah Ohlsen

aloft South Beach – Expedia.com

When we got to aloft South Beach that is when our experience declined. The employees at the front desk were not very friendly and seemed stressed even though we were the only ones checking in at the time. I was not thanked for being a SPG Gold guest or offered the welcome gift, we were not offered a room upgrade, and we had to sign waivers for Grace. The room was just OK. We were only spending a single night there and we were not planning on spending much time in the room anyway. We had asked for 4:00PM check out and they said they could only extend our check-out time one hour, until 12:00PM, because they were fully booked (I checked trying to book a room for that night and there was availability in every category). We decided to check out early and take Grace with us to the expo again Sunday morning so we wouldn’t have to return to the hotel.

Mallory and Christmas Abbott

For a short notice, pet-friendly, single night stay aloft South Beach was the convenient option. If we had planned further ahead, I am sure we could have found a better option than aloft.

On a positive note, our dinner Saturday night at OLA Miami Beach was fantastic!