T he legendary hotelier Conrad Hilton made millions by sticking to his mantra of “location, location, location”. I’m neither legendary nor a millionaire, sadly, but when it comes to Miami I suggest you ignore Mr Hilton. I’ve been to Florida’s fabulous city by the sea many times and visited its best beach addresses, from Gianni Versace’s quirky Casa Casuarina and the 1950s landmark the Fontainebleau to the stealth-wealth Four Seasons at the Surf Club, the brilliant Baz Lurhmann-designed Faena and the Asia-inspired A-list favourite the Setai.
The truth is that while those hotels are great, locals complain that their beachfront locations, where most of us holidaymakers base ourselves, are increasingly overpriced and that South Beach is becoming horribly tacky. And I did spot a worrying number of Bianca Censori-style bikinis and that so-called Aussie “classic”, the budgie-smuggler, in SoBe. I didn’t know where to look but I did know where to escape these crimes against fashion — because last summer I discovered the city’s ultimate luxury hotel bargain.
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