Where the Locals Would Stay
“Townhouse (from $145; townhousehotel.com) is the fake-it-till-you-make-it spot—and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It has a nice roof deck and a clean, modern design. It’s in a prime location, right on Collins Avenue, and during Art Basel, it gets rented out by a crazy VIP crowd.” —Zubin Nagpal, entrepreneur
“The Biltmore (from $279; biltmorehotel.com) is just so beautiful and old Floridian. It has a giant golf course, all these little terraces with places to get drinks, and a cigar-under-the-stars thing on Thursdays. It’s really old-timey Miami, with live Cuban jazz around the pool and this gilded, majestic Great Gatsby vibe. And since it was a hospital during World War II, it’s super-haunted.” —Patricia Guarch Wise, founder of the Miami Nice blog
“Epic Hotel (from $299; epichotel.com) isn’t boutique-y, but it is cool. You have this fabulous bar—Area 31—on the sixteenth floor. The vista is through the canyons of the buildings, and then due east, of the river and bay, all the way down to Miami Beach.” —Mark Raymond, attorney