For those of you that just read the first lines in a review, let me just start by warning you. Disregard the good grades this hotel some how has gotten and book something else. This place as MOLD in almost every room.
We chose this place because of Its rating, location, nice pictures, pool and price. It almost seemed to good to be true. When we checked in we found our that the hotel did not have a pool of Its own, to use a pool you had to visit their sister hotel the Gale, or another beach resort, therefor a 15$ beach resort fee was added each day.
We got three rooms on the ground floor, I think they have three floors, maybe two. When we first opened the door the stench hit us immedietly, mold. If you are not aware of mold and how it smells it could easily be mistaken for a very strong "icy" kind of detergent that stings in your nose. Which we also smelled, they had clearly tried to hide the moldy smell. I have to say that the rooms upon a first glance looked really nice. They seemed to have renovated recently, but just the exteriours, not removing any mold...We had the same moldy smell in all rooms and went straight to the front desk and told them that we could not stay in those rooms. She saids she could not argue with us since this was not the first time she had heard about this. She told us to wait and they would get us new rooms.
After 1 1/2 hours of waiting we got our new rooms. Two one the second floor, and one on the first floor. The one on the first floor obviously smelled the same as the others. The ones on the second floor was a bit better but you could still smell the mold. Once again we went to the front desk to complain and asking for our money back, so that we could find another hotel. That was impossible because there was no manager there and she would arrive 3 PM the day after. We specifically asked her "surely you must be aware of this problem? She simply replied, "yes" and said that she gained nothing by lying to us.
After debating how to solve this for about one hour she started to look for other "sister hotels". Everything along the beach was fullt booked but she was able to get us all rooms as the Mondrian hotel on the other side of Miami Beach. It only took 4 hours ....
Further more regarding the Sanctuary they booked our credit card with 500$ per room as a deposit.. Even though the booking clearly stated that they only should take 100. But there was no winning her over. And a couple of days later they charged another 500 $ to the card. When going to the hotel and asking about this, they had no clue, and the manager wasnt there until 3 PM the next day. They promised to call us, but never did.
There was alot more hassle and problems with changing hotels going in to that would mean another 1000 Words in this review. So to sum it up. Stay away! read more