My stay at The National Hotel—huge womps

I recently went to Miami with a few girlfriends.  It was a TIME to say the least.  We partied, we ate, we were accosted and made lifelong memories.  This was my second foray into South Beach madness and I loved almost every bit of it!  The only thing I could have done without, was the blatant racism and discrimination we experienced at our hotel.

This extended weekend getaway was the result of months of painstaking planning, disagreements and sideeyes.  The hardest part of the planning was picking the hotel.  We diligently did our research; read reviews and scoured discount sites.  In the end, we decided on The National.  It was a four star hotel and thanks to a glitch on their web site, we got a pretty good deal, or so we thought.

When we checked in to our non-renovated room (these are all the rage in Miami, many of the hotels are going through extensive renovations and sometimes to save more, you get less…room amenities that is).  We knew that our room was essentially the stepchild of the fabulous four-star hotel, but we were also assured that it was still in pretty good shape.  That was a lie.  The room smelled like…MOLD.  I actually can’t get down with a moldy room, especially not one I’m shelling out $250 for.  I don’t know many people that would.

After a long and nauseating whiff, we promptly went down to the front desk to complain and request a new room.  After about an hour of back and forth and tours and sweet talking, we were “given” one of the super-fly renovated rooms with a patio that led out to the sexy infinity pool.  I put given in quotes, because we were told we would have to pay an upgrade fee—rotund bummer.

After we unpacked (again), my crew and I decided to hit the town and see what the strip had to offer.  We had a fantastic time, but that’s neither here nor there.  We got back to our room at approximately 3AM and got settled in for bed.  While we were changing and brushing our teeth, we were recapping our night and the sights that we saw (boy, were there some sights—again I digress).  While I was in the bathroom freshening up, I heard a SHARP bang on our door.  When I went to go look to see who it was, I was greeted with the elderly woman that was in the adjoining room next to ours.  She then proceeded to tell me that we woke her from her sleep with our reasonable conversational voice levels.  I’ll blame the fact that she was a tourist visiting from overseas on her complete lack of respect for me and my obvious adulthood.  She came at me all SORTS of sideways.  Her daughter decided to jump on the bandwagon as well and then next thing I know there’s a strange man in a jockstrap at my door visibly upset by the noise that my friends and I were not causing.  Needless to say, I was flabbergasted by the gall of these folks to come to my door in the manner which they did.  I politely and pointedly told them to adjust their attitudes and to NEVER approach me or any other human that way.

Cut to three minutes later and the front desk is on the phone responding to a noise complaint.  Ten minutes later and the night manager and security guard are at my front door!  I felt like I was in a daze, because I had no idea how we had escalated to this point.  Fifteen minutes after speaking with the night manager, my friends and I are being moved to a new room, at four in the morning by the way.  AND we’re being escorted by security.  There were many things wrong with this picture.

As she was helping us move our bags, the security guard tried to console us by sharing that we were being treated like common criminals in a hotel we paid REAL money for because we were black and the other guests that complained/verbally assaulted me were not.  WAIT, WHAT?!?!?  She also informed us the upgrade fee we paid was completely arbitrary and at the manager’s discretion.  Apparently, people are upgraded all the time at no additional charge.

After a long night of moving and being incredulous, we were up bright and early to have the matter addressed with the owner and/or general manager.  After a frustrating game of hide-the-manager-from-the-visibly-perturbed-guests, we finally met with the general manager, Yaser.

Yaser had obviously heard about the incident from the night before and was meaning to speak to us to get our side (insert sideeye here).  After we explained to him our version of what went down, how we weren’t loud or rowdy and how the fight literally came to our door with those surprisingly gangsta knocks from a “fragile” elderly woman and her jock strap wearing bodyguard (?), we also let him know that we didn’t appreciate the subsequent treatment from management.  Yaser tried to placate us by removing the upgrade fee that should have never been.  He did nothing else to make up for the fact that we were treated like second class citizens in his establishment, so that was fun.

We asked him to comp our first night’s stay and he flip flopped for a while and promised to get back to us.  He dismissed the notion of discrimination, even though his staff fully co-signed.  He admitted that we never should have been placed in an adjoining room with the psycho nutjob and also that our safety was at one point at risk.  The jockstrap bandit allegedly threatened to break our door down and do God knows what else.  Yaser was kind enough to pen an email to let me know that he couldn’t comp our first night because he had to comp the other guests who complained about our “noise”.  That was sweet of him to display preferential treatment and yet laugh in the face of possible discrimination.

I relay this story to say that if you’re ever in South Beach and looking for a hotel, it’s safe to skip The National, unless you enjoy moldy carpet and blatant injustice.