The Breakers Palm Beach

I was surprised how poor this hotel was. I was recommended to stay there by a friend who I would have expected to have high standards but I was amazed how many mistakes they made. I have stayed in good hotels over the years so perhaps I am hard to please but here are some the issues we encountered. I stayed with my wife and family for a week so had plenty of exposure to the Breakers. In no particular order: 1. Our room was small and only had a single basin in the bathroom. Not great at nearly USD 2,000 a night. 2. The loo was broken and over filling so after about 20 mins of waiting for maintenance I opened the cistern and fixed it myself. 3. The window only opened about 10 cm. Also the window kept slipping shut so I propped it open with a shoe. 4. When the window was open, all I could hear was the massive air con / ventilation unit on the back of the Circle Restaurant below. Its ventilating a huge space so is industrially noisy. In fact you can hear it with the window closed too. 5. Also, pretty poor wifi in the room. I raised this with the hotel and to be fair they moved us to a different room. This had a double basin which was an improvement. Other things: 1, At breakfast, the hot food on the buffet is at best warm but then the plates are cold. This means your cooked breakfast is effectively cold. I would expect a hotel of this standard and cost to have the capability of warming plates. 2. On the Saturday evening in the middle of our stay, we were not able to eat dinner in the hotel. The Italian restaurant was fully booked and the "first come first served" sea food restaurant had an hour and 40 minute wait time. I guess the place is full of non residents. 3. I asked the hotel book us into a local restaurant called Echo. It's actually very good and owned by the Breakers. We arrive and the receptionist has no knowledge of our booking. I show her the booking text from the hotel and it turns out its for a date the following week. A 30 minute wait for a table... 4. The Breakers add 20% gratuity automatically to all bills / cheques. At USD 50 per person for breakfast this means you are paying USD 10 for someone to bring you a coffee and you get everyone else yourself from the buffet! It should be optional. In my view, the management of the Breakers are under massive pressure to sweat the asset as hard as possible. They charge top room rates and run with 4 star service. Its just good enough to stop most people complaining and I expect saves them significantly on operating costs. Final point, it's very corporate. My wife said she did not enjoy having to walk past several hundred identical Morgan Stanley investment bankers (obviously some sort of conference) in her robe to get to the spar. Small point but just another reason to think carefully before booking.

Visited the Breakers in mid January. Hotel is undergoing renovations so very difficult to get a table for drinks at night despite being an hotel guest and for breakfast in the morning. Housekeeping missed turn down even though we were out of the room by 5 pm. Housekeeping seemed very strangely timed and disorganized. Golf staff, though. Is top notch. Shuttle service to golf is outstanding and golf pros exceptional. Also can’t say enough about food at the golf course. If you don’t golf you may want to look elsewhere until renovations end and hopefully they get back on track.

To mark our 40th year of coming to Florida from the UK we wanted a standout stay for the final night of a 10 night holiday and this was definitely that. We booked an ocean front suite with balcony. We ended up with a corner suite which had 4 balconies wrapped around the lounge and bedroom. This was an absolutely superb room just ooozing in quality and style. As it was our final night and because the suite was just perfect - we ordered dinner in the room. We had the most wonderful service from Freddy - he has such a warm and professional character and is really good at his job. The food too was wonderful. We paid $3100 for the suite which is at the pricey end but for a treat it was well worth it. The Breakers is a legendary hotel with a huge reputation. Whilst we loved the suite, the hotel when held up to our previous stay for two nights (The Yacht Club at The Boca) lacked in effort. The staff were definitely on autopilot (except Freddy) and there was no where near as warm a welcome nor the finesse of first class received at The Boca. No champagne or offer of a cold drink on arrival though and the check in guy had an open collar and would seem more at home at a Holiday Inn, valets run off their feet with no time for niceties and generally there was a feel like "we're the Breakers - we don't need to impress". No "would you like showing around" none of the warmth or appreciation one would expect. Reputation, location and design only get you so far. Without the extra care expected from a 5 star plus hotel the experience is lacking - and it was. All that said, our concierge pulled it out of the bag with a complimentary bottle of champagne delivered to our room. A nice and very welcome treat. Maybe he sensed we were unimpressed. So 100 out of 10 for the suite 7 out of 10 for a first class welcome - which is a shame. We won't stay again but as a one off - was it worth $3100? yes I would say so - because of the room and the view for a special occasion.

We went as part of a galleries invite. The service is five stars and the attention to detail was amazing. Beautifully decorated for the holidays.

Expected much more from The Breakers. We checked in this evening, I couldn’t find the front desk. I asked someone standing there where the lobby was and they said that we weee in the lobby. A woman with a name tag was annoyed that I asked the question and wanted to know what I wanted. I asked at the front desk for a room not near an elevator or an ice machine, we were sent on a long walk up to our room to find our room right next to not only an elevator but the stairway down to the main floor. We had to go all the way back to the front desk to ask for a new room. We told the front desk we needed to get our luggage quickly as we had dinner reservations with friends, we arrived at 5:30 pm, our luggage did not find us in our room until 6:30 pm after 3 calls to the desk. We were moved to a room in the middle of the hall with 2 full size beds. They look like oversized twin beds. There must have been 20 people working at the valet and it took an hour to have our luggage delivered. Very disappointing start to our stay.