" title="Catalina Hotel">Catalina Hotel: Not a Good place to Stay  

My family party of 7,including 3 kids, booked in for a one night stopover on our way home to London following a 2 week sailing holiday in the Caribbean.
When we arrived, after a long day of travel, tired kids, heavy bags etc…three doormen watched as we dragged our heavy bags from the two taxis unassisted into the lobby.
Two reception staff, one on the phone and the other playing with e-mails. After a wait we announced our arrival and were left waiting until a third person introduced herself and explained that they were going to transfer our booking to a sister hotel, which was 7 blocks away. I asked if they had double-booked and she said no, we have the rooms but the problem is ther is a DJ scheduled to play loud music in the lobby that evening. I said we’d put up with that as we were too tired to drag the heavy bags and the tired kids to another hotel. She explained that the DJ would be playing until midnight…I said that’s ok.
After a further wait whils the woman disappeared behind the scenes to talk to the “Manager”, she reappeared and said, no, they would be transferring us to another hotel, but we’d get a free voucher to be used on our next visit!!
I maintained that we had made the booking 3 weeks ago, it had been accepted and paid by credit card and we were not moving. She turned away, ordered one of her colleagues to “book ‘em in” and proceeded to ignore us from then on.
The smug grin on the face of the guy who checked us in should have warned us that one of the rooms was so close to the lobby that it could have almost been part of it and that instead of playing until 12 midnight, the droning DJ trance music was played to a virtually empty lobby until closer to 3am, keeping us all awake despite our tiredness.
On check-out the following day we were advised that the Airport Shuttle offered on the website would only be able to take 5 people at a time, which was no use to us so we had top get taxis.
The hotel itself was ok, but the charmless, cynical, snearing behaviour of the staff was the worst experience I’ve ever had in a hotel…I will NOT be returning….have a nice day!!

Catalina Hotel is located at 1732 Collins Ave., Miami Beach.

See related reviews in: Not Recommended, Hotel, User Reviews  - 1-Star rating

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