The Miami Beach EDITION

This isn’t your father’s Marriott. Unless your dad is some kind of nightclub impresario, or similarly young at heart. The spanking new Miami Beach EDITION is a hotel by Ian Schrager — the trailblazing entrepreneur who co-created Studio 54, introduced the boutique hotel to New York in 1984 with the opening of Morgans Hotel, and popularized most of the concepts and trends we take for granted, from “lobby socializing” to the “urban resort.” The Miami location is one in a long-anticipated series of highly localized EDITION hotels — there’s already one open in Istanbul, and another in London — that the Schrager-Marriott team is rolling out across the globe.

So what sets this EDITION apart from the stiff competition in South Beach? For starters, the Marriott didn’t skimp on real estate: the hotel is located on the largest piece of beachfront property in town, with an enviable address on happening Collins Avenue. In keeping with the EDITION ethos, the architecture reflects the destination. Instead of tearing down the location’s original hotel, the vintage Seville Beach Hotel — an act that would be unlawful, anyway, in Miami’s carefully protected Art Deco District — the architects retained the striking sixties-style porte cochère, bringing in the design firm Yabu Pushelberg, high-end hotel specialists, to reimagine the interiors.

The Miami Beach EDITION is branded as (you guessed it) an urban resort, a getaway with serious design chops, a place where everything you could need or want is available under one roof. As such, it’s fairly huge — 294 guest rooms, suites, and bungalows, a pair of pools facing the ocean, an outdoor movie theatre, bowling alley, and ice-skating rink, a high-tech fitness center, several bars, a hip nightclub, a gourmet marketplace, several dining venues. The headline-grabbing restaurant has Michelin-starred chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten (at least nominally) at the helm, naturally.

Guest rooms are minimalist but lavishly outfitted: think pale wood walls and crisp white ottomans, gourmet minibars, 46-inch LCD TVs, and huge, strikingly modern marble bathrooms with custom-made bath products by Le Labo. And, if you spring for it, unobstructed views of the Atlantic from a private balcony. Of course, this is Miami, you didn’t come to hang out in your hotel room, but to see and by seen ­— lounging inside a poolside cabana, sipping mojitos in the lobby bar, or, if the mood strikes, attempting an Axel jump on the EDITION’s ice-skating rink (!).