Acqualina Resort & Residences: The Centerpiece of Luxury in Sunny Isles Beach, Fl.

It’s easy to get carried away with praise and hyperbole when describing South Florida luxury hotels and resorts. Acqualina Resort & Residences, however, surpasses even the most effusive of praise.

The Sunny Isles Beach, Fl., resort is one of the world’s great destinations, where seemingly nothing goes unnoticed, and nothing is left to chance. Little wonder why Acqualina has been awarded a Forbes Five-Star Award for nine consecutive years (including 2021). Its Acqualina Spa by ESPA, this past February, was also awarded a Forbes Five-Star rating.

Set on 4.5 acres of beachside property just a few miles north of Miami Beach, Acqualina Resort & Residences, which features 98 guestrooms and suites, 88 residences, three restaurants and three swimming pools, is the ideal blend of South Florida luxury and lifestyle.

Anchored by two sister luxury skyscraper residences – the Mansions and the soon-to-be-complete Estates – Acqualina has helped transform Sunny Isles Beach from a sleepy area of low-slung mom-and-pop hotels along Collins Ave., into one of the more desirable addresses in South Florida.

“A lot of the guests who stayed here bought into the Mansions. Now they are buying into the Estates,’’ Pinho said. “I think Acqualina has been a fantastic postcard for this area. This is an area that’s really beautiful. Even the color of water – neon blue – is different from other areas.’’

And Acqualina is its centerpiece. The resort is a haven for guests who might want to escape the South Beach hustle - even for a night or two – in exchange for unpretentious charm.

It all looks so easy… but it’s not, of course. For Mauro Pinho, Acqualina’s director of sales and marketing, success relies on two fundamentals: Team members and loyalty.

“The success of Acqualina is about respecting others’ efforts,’’ Pinho said as he sat at a table between the resort’s new Latin-Japanese Ke-uH restaurant and the beach’s hot summer sun. “At the end of the day, if you put everything into that optic - if you take care of team members and really do walk the talk and have a clear line of communication – that makes all the difference.’’

As a manager, Pinho said, it’s important to be close to his team members and understand their personal struggles.

“Work, life, balance. What can I do as a manager? What’s the piece that you need to feel good about your life? I need to deliver to a team member what he or she needs to succeed and let the process work in a long enough period of time that it generates success. That’s a culture that generates a desire to serve. There is a lot of happiness here to serve. 

“Accommodations are beautiful, but accommodations can be replicated. But the culture we have is really unique.’’

How unique? Pinho said 33 percent of Acqualina’s team members have been with the resort since it opened 15 years ago. That kind of loyalty and culture helped Acqualina seamlessly re-open in June 2020 after a three-month closing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We brought back team members as fast as we could,’’ Pinho said. “It was really great to see. The first weekend we were open, we had 98 percent occupancy, so it didn’t take long.’’

Didn’t take long because loyalty is a two-way street. That is, approximately 50 percent of Acqualina’s guests are returning customers. 

“We never lost touch with our guests, which I think was very important from a marketing perspective,’’ Pinho said. “From the first day we were closed, we maintained weekly communications with our guests. We kept them up to date on what was happening on the property.’’

While not ideal, the closing gave Acqualina’s management team to learn more about its guests.

“Before the lockdown, we didn’t understand – in depth – who are customer is,’’ Pinho said. “We always had some information, but never had the time or opportunity to drill down into it. What do they really like – from a preferred meal to what times they like to go outside? What really makes them tick? One of the things we got out that (lockdown) was to work on loyalty in ways we didn’t do before.

“Loyalty is very important. We owe so much of what we have to our guests and wanted to pay it back by understanding them. We now see loyalty in a different light.’’