How unfortunate. The Grand Beach Hotel is a lovely property - very nice rooms, decent location - that suffers from a total lack of service or even acknowledgement of guests. The place is crawling with staff who do not smile, do not welcome guests, who are slow to respond yet tack on 18 percent gratuity to every bill regardless of the poor service. The 7th floor pool, an adult pool, offers a bar that doesn't open until late, doesn't serve lunch and does not deliver food even upon request. The beachside pool is crawling with kids - this is not the place to come for a romantic getaway. The gym is filthy (how hard is it to vacuum?) and the hallways are hot and muggy. With some focused training of the staff and a commitment to cleanliness, this experience could be totally different. Finally, the hotel would be better served by management addressing these issues rather than providing a quick response by the social media director.

These are our impressions after the first 24 hours.

The Good:
- Lovely property
- Gorgeous suites. Truly. Modern furnishings. Clean. Quiet. Large spacious room with separate sitting room and TV. A full bathroom and a second bathroom with shower! In room refrigerator. Free wireless. Plenty of room to store your cloths. Gorgeous view of the bayside .... far better than the ocean view IMHO. Balconies available on request although there is limited availability.
- 7th floor adults only pool is a big plus.
- Super friendly staff.
- We asked for additional hangers and they were delivered within minutes.

Room for improvement:
- Service. First impressions matter. Valet service on arrival needs improvement. We drove up and waited. And waited. It didn't seem especially busy. Finally the single valet came over. No porter to help us with our luggage after we unloaded the car ourselves. No doorman in sight to open the front doors for us and the doors were not automatic so we had to struggle given our hands were occupied with our luggage. The 7th floor bar was supposed to open at 11AM. We stopped by at 3PM for happy/sushi hour but the doors were locked. We came back 15 minutes later; the bartender was still prepping and unlocked the doors for us. The sushi chef didn't show up for another 30 minutes.
- Food. The spicy tuna roll was excellent. The tuna carpaccio was more like sashimi and was not cooked in citrus. It was tasty but it wasn't carpaccio. The coffee bar in the lobby only serves a small size coffee. No option for a large.
- Room. The pillows are hard. No vanity which meant my wife had to drag a chair into the bathroom to get enough light to primp. Inadequate lighting around the other two desks in the room made them unsuitable for applying makeup. This is pretty basic stuff .. what woman doesn't need a lighted vanity area?

Overall pretty good so far, but not great.

Grand Beach has a prime Mid Beach location in Miami Beach. It is not South Beach in location or in state of mind. The rooms are comfortable and modern, bathroom is ok. Note that Ocean View and Ocean Front are two different things when you book. View is on the side of the hotel with a limited view to the sea. They will try to upgrade you on arrival. The hotels main issue is management. The staff quality is very mixed, some make a great effort others dont really care. Breakfast is plentiful but tastless sometimes very slow sometimes ok. Hotel played the same christmas music throughout during our whole stay. Obvious lack of sense of ambiance and style from management. Stay here with family if you are on a budget yet want spacious comfortable rooms but dont expect anything like the trendier South Beach Hotels.

We stayed here for just one night in November after a cruise. We booked it based on the great TA reviews.

The good
- impressive entrance and reception areas with coffee bars and huge sofas
- great valet service
- beautiful suites, spacious, very comfortable bed and bedding, excellent bathrooms
- location, right on the beach
- comfortable sun loungers
- adult only bar on the roof with spa - spacious with lovely warm water
- the bistro looked and smelt nice
- set in a pretty quay area


The not so good
- the pool area, whilst beautifully designed, were mainly in the shade under the palm trees
- lots of children!!!
- roof bar had sun loungers which were tied to the railings. Nobody could understand the logic of this. Most of the roof was at most times shaded by the next hotel, so it would have been nice to move the loungers into the sun
- sunbeds on beach were $10 each, which should have been free for guests
- there were no bars or restaurants close by, which meant you needed to drive
- the service at the reception coffee bar was apalling, and once we gave up and walked away. The lady was dithering and easily confused by having more than one customer
- expensive valet parking (no other choice of parking)

The hotel was set a good way out from the Miami, but only 5 minutes drive from the vibrant Lincoln Road and Espanola Way districts. It was also easily acceassible to Washington Avenue which meant you could bypass the busy Collins Avenue and avoid 5th Avenue when wanting to drive back up to Orlando. You definitely need a car - we looked into taking the bus but concierge advised us against it. Parking in Miami was expensive - no free on street parking - and it was very busy even on a Sunday night