My wife and I took a quick trip to the Sarasota area in mid-September as she wanted to visit the beach and search for shells and fossils nearby. I took advantage of the chance to try a luxury hotel that I have had my eye on since it opened – The St. Regis Longboat Key.
I booked with Marriott points for two nights and it was an eye-watering 264k points for a basic room which was listed as the Superior Partial Bayview King Room. The cash cost was over $3k for two nights so while it was a lot of points, it was technically a good Marriott redemption. Was it really worth it? Read on to find out.
We arrived fairly early into Sarasota airport and I picked up a rental car from National. It’s about 20 minutes to the resort from the airport, passing the well-known upscale shopping and dining area of St. Amand’s Circle on the way. The resort sits around midway down Longboat Key, which is just off the coast of Sarasota.
Valet parking is $55 per day, which is kind of silly and arbitrary, but also not surprising for a fancy resort in Florida. The valets were actually great and one of them even gave us a few beach tips as he had grown up in the area. The resort fee is $65 per day, which again is silly and also sadly expected at a resort like this. Unlike at a Hyatt (or a Hilton in the case of the resort fee), elite members have to pay these fees for all stays. I’m a Lifetime Platinum with Marriott.
Thankfully, despite our early arrival, we were able to get into our room at 10:45am. This is not guaranteed so I was quite pleased that the resort was able to accommodate that. Of course, we then had no chance of an upgrade, but it was a trade-off we were willing to make.
The lobby area of the hotel is very nice with the signature St. Regis bar and a sitting area for check-in.
We were escorted to our room by the “butler,” who was about the age of our youngest daughter. No old-school Jeeves or Alfred the butler in Florida 🙂
She gave us a quick overview of the room and let us know she (or her colleagues) were available for anything we needed like ice, swimsuit refresh (they will wash and dry your swimsuit in a couple of hours) or things like shoe cleaning, etc. The only thing I asked for was a bucket of ice since there were no ice machines on each floor.
Our room was the one we booked. It was nicely appointed, although facing the bed to the window was kind of pointless when you see the view we had.
We could just about see the bay over the roof of the building next door. Oh well, it was barely 11am and we were headed to the beach after waking up in Atlanta.
There was a minibar with eye-watering prices and a welcome gift for us.
We got changed and went to the beach. There was chair and towel service out there included in the resort fee. The attendant also brought us a bucket of water bottles on ice which was appreciated on a very hot day.
On each table was a little box where you could order food or drinks from a QR code menu. Here’s the menu:
After a couple of hours, we ordered some food. I also got the Cal Y Mar cocktail. The waiter told us that frozen drinks would probably melt by the time he got them to us so I appreciated his honesty.
Everything was tasty and the prices weren’t terrible considering everything was brought right to us on the beach. We charged the food and drink to our room.
The pools at St. Regis are quite impressive. There’s a separate adult pool near the beach plus a huge family pool and a lazy river that you can go around on a large inner tube. There is also a separate salt-water lagoon that has sting rays, turtles and fish where you can pay to snorkel. I don’t really love the idea of captive wildlife at a resort so I didn’t partake. A couple of these pictures were taken at night when the pool area is lit up.
When we returned to our room after the beach, there was a cake left for us as we were celebrating our 30th anniversary (this year – close enough!) It looked pretty but tasted pretty meh.
We went for a drink at the beach bar and I got some nice sunset pictures while my wife looked for a few more shells. I got bitten up a bit as I forgot to apply the provided bug repellent that was in our room.
That night we ordered some room service as we were still wiped out from the beach and had a busy day planned the next day. I didn’t get a picture of it, but it was pretty good. By the way, we forgot to go see the famous St. Regis champagne sabering where someone slices off the top of the champagne bottle with a sword.
Breakfast at the St. Regis Longboat Key was served at the Riva Italian restaurant and was excellent. As a Marriott Platinum, we had $100 credit for two of us. My one criticism of this is that the buffet is $42 and a specialty coffee is $9 so after tax and tip, two people will exceed the credit. We solved this by having me order the buffet and my wife order an entree. Even with both ordering coffee drinks, we had enough left over to round up to $100 with the tip. Here’s the menu:
Here’s some of what we had over the two mornings:
The buffet had a nice variety of hot and cold foods and everything was very good quality.
On Saturday, we went to a couple of places my wife had picked out for shark tooth/fossil hunting. We drove down to Manasota Beach (after first renting a large shovel and sifter from someone she knew in the area) and later on we went to Venice Beach. It wasn’t my favorite day ever, but she enjoyed it. We ended up eating an early dinner near Venice Beach so we didn’t try any of the other restaurants at the St. Regis. They all seemed to have decent reviews but were of course expensive relative to other restaurants in Sarasota.
On Sunday morning, I went to the gym while my wife had her last walk on the beach. It was a nice gym with lots of equipment.
We asked for 4pm checkout so my wife could watch the Eagles game at 1pm. The best they would give us was 1pm checkout (resorts don’t guarantee late checkout to Marriott elites). They did offer a day room we could book for an hour to shower and change if we wanted it later in the afternoon. In the end, the weather was iffy so we decided to leave before 1pm and go to an Eagles bar in Sarasota to watch the game before we flew out later on Sunday.
Overall, the St. Regis Longboat Key is a very nice property and probably one of the nicest resorts in Florida. Will we stay there again? Probably not. It’s a lot of points (or cash) for what is ultimately a very nice beach resort, but not exactly life-changing. This was actually the first time we have stayed at a St. Regis and I think the value is better than Ritz-Carlton for Marriott elite members as you at least get free breakfast included. The staff were all great and the food and drinks we tried were good, especially the breakfast. I can see it being a nice place for a family to spend a few days, but it won’t be cheap.
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