A Mediterranean villa pretending to be a resort. The kids' club is genuinely good — which most of Miami's aren't.
Acqualina Resort & Residences sits on a four-and-a-half-acre oceanfront parcel in Sunny Isles Beach, twenty minutes north of South Beach. The 51-storey tower opened in 2006 and has been independently owned by the Trump Group — unrelated to the political family of the same name — for its entire life. The architecture borrows from Tuscan and Venetian palace forms; the gardens, the fountains, the colonnades, and the formal entrance all read as a Mediterranean villa transplanted to Florida and scaled up. The building has held Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five Diamond status continuously since 2009, longer than almost any other resort in Florida.
There are 98 hotel rooms and suites, alongside private residences that the brand also services. Rooms start at 590 square feet — generous for the segment — and every room has an ocean-facing balcony. The interiors were redesigned in 2022 in a calmer cream-and-driftwood palette than the original; bathrooms run in honey-coloured travertine with deep soaking tubs and walk-in showers. Suites scale to multi-bedroom configurations with full kitchens, dining rooms, and the kind of layout that suits multigenerational travel without making families share a single hotel-room footprint.
Three oceanfront pools step down toward the beach: a quiet adults pool, a family pool, and a children's pool with the property's signature seahorse fountain at its centre. The beach service runs at the full Five-Star standard — branded sunscreen, fruit, cold towels, and butlers on the sand who appear before request. Costa Grill, the open-air restaurant on the pool deck, is the casual choice; Il Mulino New York, the property's marquee Italian restaurant, is among the most reliable serious meals in Sunny Isles. The 20,000-square-foot ESPA spa is the largest of any Miami hotel and runs the most ambitious treatment menu — hammam, vitality pool, ice fountain, and a dedicated couples' suite.
AcquaMarine, the resort's children's programme, is the genuine differentiator. Most Miami hotels offer children a colouring book and a perfunctory pool game. AcquaMarine is a marine-biology curriculum: licensed marine educators, a saltwater touch tank, sea-turtle release programmes, and excursions designed for children aged 5-12. It is what an actual family resort looks like, executed at a city most people associate with a different kind of trip. The teen lounge, separate, runs gaming consoles and a pool table that older children actually use.
Acqualina is the only Miami hotel that takes children seriously without losing the adult experience. The AcquaMarine programme runs as a separate operation from morning to evening, which means parents can use the spa, the adults pool, and Il Mulino without managing the day. The two-bedroom oceanfront suites are sized for actual families — not the marketing version of a family suite that turns out to be a king bed and a pull-out sofa — and the in-suite dining menu has a children's section that meets actual standards. For multigenerational trips, the residences with three bedrooms and full kitchens are the answer that hotel suites never are. Other family hotels →
Rates from $724/night. Check availability on Acqualinaresort.com.
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