The Gabriel Miami Downtown: Great Location, Not So Great Service
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When I was looking for a hotel in Miami to stay in before our Disney Cruise, The Gabriel Miami Downtown was an easy choice: great location, stunning pool, and well-appointed rooms. Plus, it is a Hilton property, so we would get Food & Beverage credits to use during our stay due to our Diamond Hilton Honors status (see the post on how we got this status here).
Unfortunately, our stay was far from perfect.
Table of Contents
Location
The Gabriel Miami Downtown is located (you guessed it) in Downtown Miami.
We liked the location because:
- The hotel is very close to the cruise port so we didn’t need to worry about being stuck in traffic on the way to our cruise.
- It is a walking distance to Bayside Marketplace, an open-air shopping/dining/entertainment center.
- And the major selling point for us was that the hotel is literally across the street from Frost Museum of Science. We are not the ones to be the first onboard a cruise ship, so we spent a few hours at the museum before the embarkation.
Room
I booked a King City View room. The hotel mostly offers king bed rooms, and a double room was not available for our dates.
Thanks to our Diamond Hilton Honors status we were upgraded to the Balcony Bay View room. We loved having the balcony as we could see the cruise port from it.
Even though our balcony overlooked a busy street, the soundproofing was pretty good, and we were not bothered by the outside noises.
The room was spacious and the bed was comfy.
You will find these amenities in the room:
- Dining table
- 300 thread count sheets
- 50-inch HDTV
- Coffee maker
See the full list of the amenities on the hotel’s website.
I found it strange that there is no door separating the bathroom area from the rest of the room – there were just curtains that are see-through, which makes them absolutely pointless.
I guess this is ok since the hotel is geared towards couples…
See the video overview of the room here:
Pool
The main pool and the lap pool are located on the 14th floor, and you just cannot beat the view from the pool deck.
Someone, not naming names (Frontier, it was Frontier), sent our luggage to Orlando instead of Miami, so all we could do is longingly stare at the pool wishing we could go for a dip as we would not be reunited with our bathing suites till an hour before we had to head to the cruise port.
Breakfast
The service at breakfast was bizarre.
For some reason we had three different servers taking our order and delivering food and drinks. It started great, but once we got our food no one checked on us and none of them brought us our bill when we were done. We sat there staring at our empty plates for like ten minutes. A server came over to offer a coffee refill completely ignoring the empty plates. I asked her for the check but she walked away pretending she didn’t hear me. Finally, a manager noticed us and got us the check.
I don’t really blame the waitstaff though: the gratuity is included in your bill, so why put any effort in if you’ll get your 18% anyway?
Hilton Food & Beverage Credit Issue
From mid-2021 and through at least 2022, Hilton replaced free breakfast perk for Gold and Diamond Hilton Honors members with $10-25 per guest (up to 2 guests per reservation though) Food & Beverage credit.
I am not a big fan of this change as more often than not we have issues with these credits, and our experience with The Gabriel Miami is no exception. However, the way they handled it was very disappointing.
After we checked out the hotel, I reviewed our invoice and noticed that the Food & Beverage credits were not applied. I reached out to the hotel via the chat function on the Hilton app and I was told this will be looked into and the refund would be issued immediately.
A few days later and no refund, I reached out again to check on the status. This time I was chatting with Franc who said he would issue a $12 refund right away. I pointed out that the refund should have been $24 as there were two guests in the room. However, Franc was insisting there was the only guest to which I responded that the hotel invoice clearly shows one adult and one child (1+1=2). After that, he reluctantly agreed to issue the second $12 refund.
I don’t know if Franc was having a bad day or it was something else, but, as his parting remark, he suggested that next time I should “properly add a guest” to “avoid any more confusion”.
Well, that was just me (an adult) and my daughter (a child) traveling. Reservation was made for one adult and one child. The hotel receipt shows one adult and one child. I’m not sure how much more “properly” I can add a guest.
Also, I never got that second credit refund…
Final Thoughts
I was expecting so much more from the higher-tier Hilton property. The location and the views from the Gabriel Miami Downtown did not disappoint, but the service sure did.
