We stayed here for a week just for fun. Customer service is excellent; the staff is very professional and eager to please. The concierge service is top-notch as well; they go out of their way to make sure you know all the options available for what you're looking for.

The hotel is a 5-minute walk from a brand new Publix grocery store, which was nice because we wanted to keep food in the room so that we didn't have to spend a lot for every meal since dining out is expensive in that part of Miami. The rooms have little refrigerators (not mini-bars, so there's more storage room) which make it possible to store fresh, healthy snacks.

There's a free trolley that covers a good part of the sightseeing district and maps are available at the concierge desk. Public transportation is cheap and easy to use for areas not covered by the free trolley. The hotel is about a 6-7 minute ride by car to South Beach or an hour to walk (South Beach looked a lot closer on the map!)

Things I wasn't real happy with: the hotel is old and although the rooms are very clean, it's badly in need of rehabbing. The windows in our room were really dirty as were the elevators. (I've become accustomed to the immaculate standards at Mexican resorts.) I've stayed at a number of Doubletree hotels elsewhere and this one needs to come up to standard with the others. Doubletree advertises the quality of the beds and usually I find this to be true, but one of the beds in our room had a mattress that was so worn that it created a cavernous ditch as soon as you put weight on it. The wallpaper is dated and our room was very dark for my taste, even in the daylight hours with the sun shining brightly outside.

There are only a handful of restaurants (most are pricey) within walking distance of the hotel. Other options are to ride the trolley to a more populated area or go to South Beach. You have to take a trolley or a car/taxi to get to retail areas that are of interest to tourists/vacationers.

Daylight savings time had ended over 3 weeks prior to our stay, but the time stamp on the TV had not been rolled back an hour and the electronic TV guide was virtually worthless because it showed selections starting an hour later than it actually was (e.g. if it's 1pm, the TV guide showed shows starting at 2pm or later). This was known to be an issue, but the response I received was that the service provider was responsible for changing the time. I escalated the issue up the chain of command and the time stamp was changed the day before we left. This issue was annoying to me because the staff knew about it but was passively waiting for the service provider to change it (when would that be? It had been almost a month since clocks were rolled back) instead of proactively contacting them to fix it.

If you want a final invoice for your stay, you have to physically go to the front desk, which is a little outdated in terms of technology available that precludes the need to do this. Upon checking out, I noticed a charge to a room for a phone call that we didn't make. The front desk person assured me the charge would be reversed. After a week and half, I noticed my credit card had still not been credited. I called again; it's been 2 weeks since I left the hotel and the charge has not yet been credited.

Would I stay here again? Probably not - I would rather stay in South Beach where there is close proximity to restaurants and shops. If the rooms were updated, allowed more sunlight and had clean windows I might reconsider.