Review of National Hotel, An Adult Only Oceanfront Resort 4*

Look of the hotel would be 4 stars, but do to the rest of the cons, I can only give the National 2 stars. I guess I will start off with the positive. Pros: 1 — The hotel is beautiful taking you back in time to the early 20th century. 2 — The room was nice and clean. Cons: 1 — The Toilet not being the correct size for the toilet itself. The toilet seat was so small when your legs rested on the toilet bowl itself. Gross! See Photo. On a few occasions, we requested them to change it out. They sent a employee to look at it. He said he would be right on it. Needless to say, it never was replaced with the correct size. 2 — There is no guest Ice Machines on the entire property. I have never seen this before. We requested room service to bring us some ice. It came in a small bag for that fit in the usual ice bucket that comes with most rooms. We had a ice chest that needed to be filled. I had to go across the street to purchase bags of ice. 3 — There were no vending machines on the entire property. If you wanted a coke, you would have to purchase it from the bar or restaurant. I heard one person say that it was around $4 for a coke. I'm guessing that they would add a mandatory 18% gratuity to the purchase. On that note, all purchases have a mandatory 18% gratuity added to the bill. Note: that is most services industries in Miami Beach. 4 — This is a big pet peeve for me. They would not let you bring your own drinks and food to the pool and common areas. They will stop you and tell you that it is not allowed. I could not find this in the description of the hotel. If it did, it was not obvious. Same thing on the beach. The server walked around telling people that they could bring their own food and drinks to a Public beach where their chairs are. I have never heard of this at any hotel that I have ever been to. It’s a public beach. They want you to purchase their very expensive food and drinks and pay the mandatory 18% gratuity. 5 — They were sometimes out of towels on the beach on a couple occasions. 6 — They did not tell us that the "Infiniti Pool" would be out of service. I wonder why? It was like a construction site around the main center piece of the hotel. See Photo. The smaller pool's water was hazy aka not clear. 7 — The "internet" did not work at all for the entire time in our hotel. Not sure about the rest of the hotel. We had to use my “personal hotspot”. 8 — No Coffee maker in the room. 10 — No bike rack or a place to lock up the bikes. 11 — It was hit and miss with hotel service. Sometimes it was very good and sometimes it was lacking. In my opinion, the hotel seemed to be a little under staffed. 12 — Beach Umbrellas are not included with the two chairs per room. You would think they would include it in the additional Mandatory Daily "Resort Fee". This Daily fee is in addition to your hotel rates. 13 — The temperature in the hotel lobby was warm. Could not sit in there due to the lack of adequate A/C.