Wolfgang Koch

Review of The Clay Hotel

Everything was neat, clean, and tidy: room, bathro...

Everything was neat, clean, and tidy: room, bathroom, sheets, and towels. Plus, they give you unlimited bottled water and two coffee pods, too, for the Keurig coffee maker in the room.

Everything was in good working order, too with the possible exception of the TV, where satellite reception was kind of in and out at times. But hey, if you are going to check into a hotel in Miami Beach, it won't be for watching TV, huh?



So far, so cool, but in this case, two things caused for the rating to drop to three stars:

1. Checking in can turn out to be cumbersome and confusing. The hotel doesn't have its own entranceway, so when you look for a space to leave your car just for 15 minutes or so to check in, you will find yourself in some space that isn't the hotel's, so technically you may be trespassing. Only when you go in will they give you directions to the valet-parking drop-off. Meaning, you will have to do another "figure eight" in the Miami Beach gridlock.

2. The price that is quoted and showing on the reservation confirmation doesn't include tax and resort fee. It's not the hotel's fault that tax and resort fee apply, only that if the confirmation purports to show the "total," it should include tax and resort fee, or it's not well, the total. At the very least, that's a nasty surprise when you see unexpected additional charges on your credit card.

This is certainly one of the more affordable hotels in the area, and it came recommended in the Lonely Planet Florida travel guide. So is the "sneak attack" with the tax and resort fee an allusion to the hotel's history that it used to be owned by Al Capone?