We just returned from our second visit to the Sombrero in Marathon, FL. We have found this destination to be a great value for our family. The accomodations are not luxurious (my wife says more like a college appt.) but the location is awesome. The one bedroom condos provide for the privacy of a seperate bedroom.

A short drive to many great beaches and parks. The hotel pool is large and open until 10pm. There is a Publix a couple of blocks away (walking distance). We did not eat at the restaurant on site - but it has stayed in business for some time, and there is a Tiki Bar right next to the pool w/ entertainment some nights. There is a golf course right accross the street as well (rare in the Keys).

My husband and I stayed at the Sombrero Resort for 12 days for a friend's wedding/personal vacation time. We got one of the rooms with a king-sized bed, which I liked but my husband thought was too soft. The amount of space you get was great for two people, but would probably be crowded for more than that. The bedroom is facing the pool and has its own TV, balcony, and AC unit (typical wall-mounted unit, about 2' x 2.5'). There is a full kitchen (full-sized fridge, stove, sink; comes with toaster, microwave, dishes, coffee maker), and the living room area has a large TV, couch, table with 2 chairs, and another AC unit. The AC units are really, really loud. We had to turn it on to stay cool enough to sleep, but it was too loud to watch TV with the AC on. The hotel itself is right between a canal and a golf course, which sounds quite lovely, but it's a smelly canal and the backside of a golf course with a lot of fences. To get to the "resort," you have to drive down a road that is under construction and full of potholes.

At first, the Sombrero seemed like a bargain - they quoted us $89 a night, which is pretty cheap for the Keys over the holidays. However, at the end of our stay, they added about $30 worth of miscellaneous fees per night ("resort" fees, taxes, nothing we could have avoided), so the total was closer to $120/night. Not such a bargain after all!

Calling this place a "resort" is kind of a joke, but I will at least admit that they aren't the only place in the Keys to do this. In any other town, this would be a motel, plain and simple. Rooms open to the outdoors, not an interior hallway. Furnishings are of the quality you would expect in any run down out-of-date motel. Think thin scratchy bedspreads, weird velveteen blankets, scratchy sheets, typical beachy 80's-inspired decor, etc. The elevator license was expired. The stairs and some other interior fixtures were very rusty. Another reviewer here raved about the fluffy towels, but ours were typical rough hotel towels.

In our bathroom, the toilet tank leaked onto the floor. We used up many towels just trying to have a dry bathroom floor. The shower had good water pressure, and the shower stall itself was pretty spacious with a little built-in seat, although the floor was cracked. On the bathroom wall, there was a space for a built-in hair dryer, but ours was missing.

We did not have bedbugs in our room, but another wedding guest a few doors down did. They moved her to another room, but she had already been eaten alive on the first night. The hotel did nothing to prevent the spread of bedbugs from her old room to her new one via her bags, so it's not surprising to read the other reports of bedbugs on here.

Hotel staff in the main office spoke English; housekeeping staff did not. This was a problem for us, since the housekeeping service was entirely unpredictable and we could not communicate with them. I think they must be understaffed. Some days, we were woken up at 9:30 by housekeeping; other days, we returned at 5:30 to a room that was still dirty. There is a tag you can hang on your door for maid service, but it is certainly not a guarantee. If you are staying multiple days, don't expect a lot from housekeeping. All they did for us was give us fresh towels and make the bed - they only gave us new sheets once (we stayed almost 2 weeks), and never did anything else (vacuum, dishes, etc.).

The location is OK if you are interested in going to Publix, Winn-Dixie, or K-Mart. The beach is too far away to walk easily. The canal is readily accessible, but it is really just a place for people to park their boats and nothing more. The pool was fine; I read some reviews here that mentioned how close the bar is to the pool, and that is true. The bar is next to the pool, but it's not so close that I would really worry about taking kids there or anything like that; it's probably 20 feet away, and it's not the kind of place (at least while we were there) with a lot of people coming and going. Bar patrons seemed to be regulars that sat down there and stayed a while, and mostly kept to themselves. There were plenty of kids running around and playing. However, they did have the karaoke bar running at night, which could only be drowned out in our room by turning on the jet engine... oops, I meant AC unit.

Overall, I think the Sombrero Resort is an astonishingly mediocre motel; whether or not you will like it depends mostly on what you expect and whether or not you are unlucky enough to get bedbugs. The best thing about the rooms were the amount of space you got. Don't let the word "resort" in the title fool you. If you are just looking for a place to stay with a functional full kitchen so you can save some money, this will do. If you actually want your hotel to be memorable and an enjoyable part of your trip, go somewhere else.

It was our worst stay. The (full) kitchen did not even have cutting knives and stove was not working. Even after complaining to the front desk, nothing was fixed. And the worst were the bed bugs. House keeping was so poor that we actually had dirty utensils in room when we checked in.
I would never recommend this hotel.

I saw reviews warning about the bed bugs - I was optimistic about the recent renovations - sorry to say that the mattresses in 3 different rooms all looked old and stained - NO renovations - and the doors and trim were all funky/chipped - big stain on the middle of the carpet - both the bed and pull out couch had little critters waiting to devour my flesh- NO THANKS! All this place needs is a match - sorry to be so heartless but I asked the person taking the reception over and over about this particular review and all they could say is that if I wasn't satisfied upon check-in was that I could change my room - unfortunately, we looked at 3 and thought we picked the best one - tried to save a few bucks but it came back to bite me!