Miami

So last month I made the trek back to Miami for the Florida Georgia Line Cruise Round 2.

One of the great things about doing year 2 was that I already knew what to expect from year 1.

I also had a more leisurely amount of time to spend in Miami having already seen most of the sights the year before. After dropping our bags off, we headed straight to Versailles Cuban Restaurant.

It was fairly early and they were serving breakfast. I cannot recommend the guava pastries enough. These were fresh and gooey and just soooooo yummy.

After wandering a bit, we headed back to the hotel to wait for an available room.

Now I work in hospitality. I've worked room reservations and I've worked front desk. I have to say, I am not happy with the way the front desk chose to handle our check-in.

When we first dropped off our bags, I very nicely asked if we could go ahead and put down our credit card and have them call us when a room opened up since we were well aware that it was too early to check-in. It's a small hotel, so I assumed this would be okay. I was (almost snidely) told to call the hotel myself because they were just so busy. Um, okay. Sure. Once the front desk agent had our bags taken and we were on our way out, we chatted a bit and she perked up once she knew I worked a front desk myself back in Vegas. You know, a place with really massive hotels. The last hotel I worked at had a whopping 1886 rooms. This place had 65. I'm sorry, but how busy can swamped be? The place I work at now has almost three times that many rooms available and it's considered "very small". We were told to try around noon.

When we returned, she checked and said there was still nothing but someone would let us know when a room opened up and we sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. Now she was very nice at this point and somewhere in this two hour waiting period, she went on her break. Enter other front desk agents. A woman who had very clearly gotten there after us decides to go and complain about her long wait. She is offered a few options and gets a room right away. A couple walks in after her and upon being told check-in begins in a few hours, they get mad. They are given options and get a room right away.

At this point, I'm confused and frankly, more than a little bit pissed off. I very nicely approach the front desk and ask why we were not offered any options when the other two guests arrived after us. Now when a guest is mad, DO NOT patronize them. I was basically told I had no options because of the type of room I had booked. So, you couldn't offer me any other room type even at an upcost? When I don't have any of a certain type of room available, I offer options. If a guest chooses not to take the upcharge, fine, but then they know what options they had and don't feel misinformed or discriminated when everyone else gets a room. I asked why we had been sitting there for two hours without an update and was almost rudely told that they don't follow-up if there are no updates. Now maybe this is just me trying to give good service, but even if a room a guest has asked for isn't available yet, if it's been a few hours, I say "hey, we are still working on it, hang in there" just so they know they haven't been forgotten. Of course after I walked away shaking my head, something "magically" opens up and it's an "upgrade". 

In addition to the weird service, the hotel was in a very hard to find area and virtually none of my Lyft drivers knew where to find it. Fun times. This resulted in an overcharge of about $20 on one of my rides because the driver got so insanely lost. Thank you so much, Hotel Urbano. 

Cute hotel. Fun pic of my matching toiletries.