I believe Milton may delay it a bit for obvious reasons.

What are they saying locally for storm surge here? Looks like it’s going to be pretty devastating. Booked for March, wondering how much of a long term impact this will have.

March you will be just fine other than the depth of the beach. Lived on Longboat Key in a condo next to where the St. Regis is and pre-hurricane the depth of the beach was not much wider than a typical city street. Now that is likely to be even smaller.

Milton is going pretty much right over the resort.

Seems not too bad based on this initial report I found besides flooding and power outages but not really blown out buildings, hopefully a sign they can open soon once water & power is restored:

The Longboat Key Fire Rescue Department shares an update.

• Our Tactical First In Team (TFIT) is currently staged at Marina Jack’s
• All bridges have to be assessed prior to our driving over – this has to be completed by an FDOT Engineer and out team is awaiting their arrival (the island is still not open)
• Initial reports suggest that the surge wasn’t as high as what we experienced with Helene
• There are widespread power outages
• There is no water / waste water service on the island
• As soon as we can get photos of the island and or drone footage we will share on our social media sites, again this may take some time as we don’t have immediate access to the island

Are you still going?
Looks like the resort re-opened Wednesday.

Moved our stay to early Dec.

My wife and I just completed a 3-night stay at this resort to celebrate the soon-to-be arrival of our first kid. We used points for the stay (an outrageous number of them, but still probably a good value given how high cash rates are). There were a ton of families with children – it seems there are not many high-end family-friendly resorts in the Sarasota area, and they are definitely filling that niche. The property offers a number of kid-friendly (and mostly free) activities each day. There’s also a massive outdoor aquarium with 2,500 fish and manta rays; and two 20-year-old tortoises that you can feed and pet once a day. Super cool.

I’m happy to report the stay was mostly positive, though there are some things worth knowing and some service kinks that probably need to be ironed out.

The property is visually stunning. I’ve never been to an Aman before, but having read a number of reviews, I’d say it feels like a property from that brand. Beautiful colors, fixtures, design, furniture and lighting everywhere you look. The hotel is brand new and feels like it. Nothing about the physical structures themselves would tell you that two hurricanes blew through less than two months ago.

That said, the resort is still not fully operational. More than a handful of the palm trees on the property are defoliated. Only one of the three pools is fully operational. The larger main pool that’s 4 feet at the deepest point is heated to a nice temperature, the adults only pool is totally closed and the lazy river is open but the water is not heated and thus most people will find it too cold. This is something I think the hotel should proactively tell folks about ahead of time. We received a boilerplate welcome e-mail a few nights before we arrived and it did nothing to manage expectations. (In addition to the hotel, there is a lot of debris/downed trees scattered all across the area, and a majority of the shops on nearby St. Armands are shuttered.)

Whether due to the hurricane or just a slow-rolling soft opening, other things to note: the gift shop is an empty glass box, the high-end Vilebrequin shop is closed and only 140 of the 164 rooms at the property are being sold (as of this weekend). Even-numbered rooms face the Gulf of Mexico (and the pools), odd-numbered rooms face the Sarasota Bay and the city of Sarasota.

A few quick things:

• Parking is valet only at $55/night
• Resort fee is $62.15/night and you get roughly what you’d expect for it (not much)
• Breakfast amenity for titanium/ambassador is $100/day in the restaurant Riva – more than enough for two people to order anything they’d possibly want
• 4PM late check out is not guaranteed as they claim the resort exception; we were offered 2PM and granted 3PM after asking nicely
• There are five dining options on property, plus a lobby bar and a coffee shop open 7AM-1PM: a steakhouse, an all-day Italian eatery, a Peruvian-Japanese fusion restaurant open only for dinner, a restaurant by the pool open most of the day (sit down and poolside service offered), and a beach shack type place. We enjoyed all of the food we had on property. The bar was particularly festive and lively over the weekend with live music each night.

A few nitpicks, a lot of which may be personal preference, but hey this is my review:

• The hotel does not have any luggage racks either in the room upon arrival or available to be brought up. This is strange because the only place to put your luggage is on the floor (presuming you don’t want to put it on top of the beautiful new furniture). I get that the butlers will pack and unpack for you, but we’re not the kind of people who like that.
• I’ve stayed at 403 different hotels since 2014 (yes, I keep a spreadsheet) and never before have I slept under a down duvet as hot and heat-trapping as the one on this bed. My wife and I each barely slept the first night and ended up awash in a pool of our own sweat that morning. The only alternatives are a cheap Walmart-type polyester blanket they’ll bring to your room or the sheet alone, which is what we ended up opting for.
• The AC is capped at 67. The thermostat is a newer model and I couldn’t find any “hacks” for it online.
• The hotel offers first come-first serve Bentley house car service to anywhere on the Key. We took it to dinner on our last night and when I called to be picked up, I was told the driver was at the hotel and would leave to pick us up. Thirty minutes later I received a call saying they were overwhelmed and someone would be leaving in five minutes (for the 15-minute drive to us). This is not the kind of detail-oriented service I expect from the STR brand.
• Service at breakfast was always super friendly, but a bit lacking at times. Over three mornings, not once did any of our dishes that required a spoon come with one. I ended up using the little stirring spoon that came with our coffee. One morning it took 10 minutes for water to be offered. I found this all a bit surprising because they’re quite well-staffed.
• The lights are not on traditional switches, but on labeled buttons that describe where the light is. Typically, shades and curtains are on these types of switches too, but the property owners decided not to install electric curtains. Seems like a missed opportunity to allow guests to wake up and press a button to see the beautiful Gulf of Mexico view they're paying for.

There are no bibles in the rooms, but ours had a copy of Douglas McWilliams’ “The inequality paradox: how capitalism can work for everyone” by the bedside.

Thanks for this great review!
A bit disappointed to hear there are so many kids as we’re looking for a nice couple retreat. Was it fall break somewhere? Over the week-end?
Are they planning to heat the pool later on or did you get the sense it would stay as is?

Not sure if it's fall break, but it was the weekend before Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how much that contributed to it. There were far more kids than we expected, but it really didn't detract from our experience.

As for the pools, they are definitely planning on heating them. A few employees told us that the hurricanes destroyed the units that heat the two pools and they're working on replacing them. Two months seems like a while to wait, but I know nothing about the commercial swimming pool heat pump supply chain. I'd probably call the hotel before booking/arriving to see what the status is.

From what I hear from the retail grapevine that St Armand’s will never be the same after those hurricanes. I hear many stores and possibly restaurants will never reopen. I’ll take the good with the bad since Helene was a cat 5 just 48 hours before landfall. It would have been Katrina like and we remember how long it took New Orleans to recover

Thanks for the review, but I have one question. The breakfast benefit should be for Platinum and above, but you mentioned Titanium/Ambassador. Are they not honoring the terms of the program? or are you Titanium and forgot to mention Platinum?

Does anyone have any information about suite upgrades, either personal experience of what was offered to you at check in or info on using the NUAs? I am booked in a Superior Bayview room, and see NUA options of Deluxe and Grand Deluxe rooms which would just switch you over to the other side of the building for the Gulf views. But there are no actual Suites available with the NUAs. This could be due the fact that I have one of the cheapest rooms they have as I booked on certs/points. Maybe if you have a Grand Deluxe booked, you might get real suites available with the NUAs?

Also I cant tell what the difference is between a Deluxe and Grand Deluxe. They both have balconies and water views and are listed at the same sq feet.

With Katrina it was not the main tourist areas that flooded, with St. Armand's Circle it flooded twice last year, I wonder if those buildings are even insurable at this point. From the video I saw there is a fundamental floodability issue with the circle itself, if you take a look at this video you'll see that the circle itself appears to be flooding even when the areas closer to water are not flooded.

Edited to add: We're heading to this property next week for three nights for Spring Break (three nights before this down at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point), hopefully it's all open by now for the most part, we'll see.

Just completed a weekend stay, during the what I guess is considered spring break. Staff at check in told me traffic during spring break in the area can be awful. The resort is located an easy 25 min drive from SQR. I was able to check in early around 11am and FDA detailed elite benefits including $100 breakfast credit. No late checkout honored after requested. The hard product of this resort is spectacular and rooms, common spaces, gym, pools, and restaurants all meet brand standards. Service on the other hand is lackluster and needs significant improvements.

Some noteworthy things pending travel preferences…some of the hotel amenities lend itself to being a family friendly hotel such as the lagoon/lazy river, but this property is overrun with small children. I dont imagine based on the branding which is quite unique and has a gilded age feel, this was originally their target guest. Pool chairs are a mad scrabble first thing in the AM, and quickly reminds you that you are in FL. Pool staffing levels are inadequate, over the course of the weekend had one staff member ask if I needed anything. Butler box, is a joke….unless we just had a broken pager, no one ever came. Overheard staff say they have shortages because their seasonal workers were sent back to Peru, seems like poor planning by management if this is your busy season.

Had dinner at CW Prime and the meal was excellent. They allow you to select your steak knife of preference out of 4-5 options, different and fun. Breakfast at Riva is an absolute nightmare. Every morning the wait was a min 30 mins for a table. The hotel GM needs to fire the entire staff, and start over. There were tables that did not get bused during our entire meal, wait staff just never showed up or refused to service tables outside of their section. The manager was left to try to clear tables, pickup checks, pour coffees, and listen to wait staff complain about how guests were irritated with the lack of service. The buffet itself does not meet the expectations of a St Regis.

Overall this resort fits into the visiting friends and family business model well and is literally the only luxury property in close proximity. Most of the key is drab looking condos from circa 1970s. For families it may check a lot of boxes, for couples I would not recommend and I will not return.