The Setai, Miami Beach

On Collins Avenue at 20th Street, a low Art Deco hotel of the 1930s fronts a glass tower of 40 storeys set back towards the sea. The Setai, Miami Beach opened here in 2004, joining the two buildings around a courtyard, and it brought a South-East Asian idea of hospitality, quiet, dark-toned and attentive, to one of the busiest stretches of beach in Florida.

History

The building on the street is the former Dempsey-Vanderbilt Hotel, one of the many Art Deco hotels raised along Collins Avenue in the 1930s. By the 1990s much of South Beach had been restored, and the old hotels had found new life as boutique addresses. The Setai project went further: it kept the Deco building as its entrance and public rooms and placed a tower of hotel suites and private residences behind it on the oceanfront. The name and the sensibility came from Asia, and the hotel's early management drew on the resort traditions of South-East Asia, with a high ratio of staff to guests and a hushed manner unusual in Miami Beach at the time.

Architecture and design

The Belgian designer Jean-Michel Gathy, whose studio Denniston is behind resorts across Asia and the Indian Ocean, shaped the interiors and the grounds. He kept the Deco shell of the old lobby and filled it with dark teak, black granite and bronze, and laid out a courtyard with a long reflecting pool between the old building and the new tower. Lanterns, low seating and carved screens carry the theme through the public rooms, and the light is kept low in the evening.

Outside, three swimming pools step towards the dunes, each kept at a different temperature, so that guests can move between cool and warm water. Beyond them lie the hotel's beach and its daybeds.

Rooms and suites

Rooms and suites are divided between the Art Deco building and the tower. The upper floors of the tower are given over to large suites and private residences, with views across the Atlantic and back over Biscayne Bay to the mainland. The palette of the lobby continues upstairs, with teak and dark stone.

Dining

Jaya, the main restaurant, sits in the Art Deco building and serves dishes drawn from across Asia. The courtyard bar is the place for a drink after dark, by the reflecting pool, and meals are also served on the terraces facing the pools and the beach.

Wellness

The Spa at The Setai offers treatments in the South-East Asian tradition in private suites set apart from the beach. For many guests, though, the three pools and the sea are the main event, and the beach service extends the attention of the hotel onto the sand.

Weddings and events

The courtyard, the pool terraces and the beach serve as settings for weddings and private dinners, and indoor rooms cover meetings and smaller celebrations.

Location

The hotel stands in Collins Park, at the northern end of South Beach. The Bass, the museum of contemporary art, is a block north, and the pedestrian mall of Lincoln Road lies a few blocks south-west. The Miami Beach Convention Center and the Fillmore theatre are a few blocks west. Ocean Drive and the heart of the Art Deco Historic District are further south. Among the luxury hotels in Miami Beach, few combine a Deco street front with so much beach behind it. Miami International Airport is about 20 minutes away by car when the causeways are clear.