My spouse and I
stayed at the Aloft Sarasota for three nights in late December 2016 while we visited
family for the holidays. We reserved our room via telephone because we had a
promotion code that we could not make work online on their website. The Aloft
brand is part of the Starwood hotel chain (which includes Four Points, Sheraton,
Westin, St. Regis, and W, plus now also includes all Marriott holdings
including Courtyard, Fairfield, Springhill Suites, Residence Inn, JW,
Ritz-Carlton, and Gaylord).
The Aloft Sarasota
opened in February 2016 in downtown Sarasota, close to the bay and small marina,
and near shops and restaurants. The hotel offers the WXYZ lobby bar, outdoor
rooftop pool bar, a 24-hour pantry area (where you can purchase grab-and-go
items like fresh fruit, beverages, packaged dry snacks, and refrigerated and
frozen foods), and a small self-service limited hours eatery called Re:fuel.
(Re: fuel makes cooked-to-order breakfast sandwiches, but nothing later in the
day.) It appears that the hotel has an empty street-level space (including a
small outdoor deck) that could potentially host a full-service restaurant in
the future. The Re:charge fitness center is open 24 hours, with the outdoor
rooftop pool open from 11:00 am until dusk. An outdoor interior-facing
courtyard located off the non-traditional lobby (round check-in desk, trendy
furniture, billiards table, DJ in the evening) offers two fire pits, a
waterfall, and a projection wall for light shows and movies. Complimentary Wi-Fi
is available throughout the hotel. Small pets are welcome; the hotel even
offers pet beds, food/water bowls, and treats. If you forgo daily housekeeping,
the hotel will offer you a food/beverage credit of about $5 per day. Both valet
and self-parking are available for a reasonable fee.
The Aloft offers
139 rooms in various configurations, including King (310 to 325 square
feet) and Double Queen (360
to 378 square feet) rooms spread
across ten stories. “Splash” rooms are the largest (360 to 420 square
feet) and provide easy access to the outdoor pool deck. An adjacent (and interconnected) apartment building
called One Palm offers 138 rooms for long-term guests; tenants share the
hotel’s fitness center and pool (with some lucky apartments offering terraces
adjacent to the pool deck).
We occupied Room
908, which overlooked the interior courtyard and was located near the bank of
two elevators. (The hotel is quite secure because you cannot travel anywhere on
the elevator without first swiping your room key.) Our king room contained a bed,
desk and rolling chair, and accent chair. No luggage stands are available, so
the hotel gave us two banquet chairs on which to place our bags. (If we had
placed them atop the large desk, we would not have been able to use it for its
intended purpose, and the accent chair, while hip and attractive, was made of a
sort of molded plastic and therefore unsuitable to hold anything but a person’s
behind.) The hotel provides complimentary bottled water and in-room coffee
making facilities, as well as a small (empty) refrigerator beneath the bathroom
sink. We felt that the lighting was inadequate for our taste; it was very dim
in our room, even with the shades on the two windows fully open. We also found
the wall air-conditioning unit to be noisy and inaccurate; it was either too hot
or too cold in our room, but never just right. Our biggest complaint was the
bathroom design/layout. The sink area was located outside of the room that
contained the toilet and oversize glass shower (a layout which we generally find
convenient when two people share a room). However, because the sink area was
divided from the sleeping area by a trendy closet/furniture piece, and also
because the shower contained a frosted window that overlooked the bedroom, one
could not turn the light on for either the sink or the toilet area without
allowing light into the sleeping area. In addition, the sliding pocket door
between the sink area and the toilet/shower room caused additional light and noise
seepage to awaken another guest. We are not sure of a solution to
this issue – perhaps adding blinds or a shade in the shower? Somehow allowing
the sliding door that covers the closet area to also slide across the doorway
between the sink and the sleeping area? The room is stylish and trendy-looking,
just not well-designed for more than one guest at a time. The hotel provides Bliss toiletries; however, they are not
standard mini-bottles like you find in other hotels; the two-in-one combination
shampoo/conditioner and body wash (in the trademark Bliss blue color, which is
a bit off-putting) were dispensed from plastic units on the shower wall. Bar
soap (again blue, which became an unappealing mess as the days wore on) was
provided for the sink. No robes or slippers were available, and the towel
supply was a bit meager for two guests. The closet storage unit, while nice-looking
and modern, was less functional than we would have liked.
Even with our few issues, we loved the location of the
Aloft Sarasota, so we will return for the right price.
