Michael Prentice

Review of The Clay Hotel

We were looking at a fairly low budget place in So...

We were looking at a fairly low budget place in South Beach that wasn't too gross or dangerous. We certainly found it with The Clay Hotel.

We didn't see a roach all weekend. The general hotel areas were quite clean and did appear to be renovated. It is an old historic building though, so don't expect it to be like a 30 floor building built within the last 10 years. It has a lot of character and reminded us of hotels we visited in France.



The room itself was clean and functional. The bed was firm and the AC was consistent and cool. We had a remote control for the AC unit overhead, but we didn't need to use it. There were 2 fairly small flat screen TVs (we barely turned them on at all but they worked). We had 2 rooms, one with a couch and a sort of contemporary rocking chair and the other with the bed and end tables. The closet was tiny, but it was a short stay so we did not mind.

There was a modern and clean fridge, microwave, and hot water boiler in the room as well. The shower was quite cramped but clean and the shower head had good pressure. It looked like the window in the shower had been re-done lately. There was no AC in the shower and the window let through more noise than the bedroom windows. So it is likely that people would keep the bathroom door closed while sleeping (we did), this appears to have caused some mold to start growing on the ceiling which was otherwise clean.



The main complaint we had was with the valet parking. We left the car with the valet for 2 days and did not use it at all. When the car was returned to us, there was a plastic bottle of Fanta soda in the backseat on the floor. It was not well closed and dripping soda on the carpet. It was certainly not ours and we don't know where it came from. We checked the inside for anything missing but didn't notice anything. The outside was covered with palm tree date/fig droppings that were sticky and messy but came off with a heavy rain on the way home.