Zota Beach Resort

I would have rated it a 5 stars, but there are a few things that are not deserving 5 stars. The pool was nice, and the beach view from our 6th floor balcony room was beautiful. However, the experience fell short of a “5 star experience that was heavily advertised. From the moment we arrived we noticed the difference. A core part of a luxury hotel is the seamless service, but there were no bellmen available to assist with our luggage. This small and First detail set the tone for a stay that, while nice, lacked the personalized care and attention one would expect at A LUXURIOUS GET AWAY, NEWLY REIMAGINED AS AS ELEGANT OASIS, FEATURING LUXURY ACCOMMODATIONS, as advertised thru out. The missing amenities continued in our room. These are minor inconveniences on their own, but they are not what you encounter at a TRULY LUXURIOUS DESTINATION. Please stop advertising it as a Luxury Resort when it is NOT. All in all we had a nice stay but a little disappointed with the aforementioned LUXURY RESORT.

This resort is a nice beach resort but we were beyond impressed with the beach staff and how happy they are in the hot sun and show true energy in helping us. Evan welcomed us before we got to the beach and asked genuine questions about our trip and was very excited to help us. Once we were down at the beach Riley asked if we wanted towels and waters and gave them to us with a big smile and told us that Terell would be walking us down who was very kind and genuine and gave us a nice spot and has been checking in on us.

We were completely disappointed with our stay last weekend at Zota Beach Resort. This property is very generic and distant with no “resort-like” features at all. Our visit began with the valet parking attendant, there was no option to self-park because the lot was full, we said we were hotel guests, and he asked for our name and gave us our ticket, no smile or actual greeting “welcome to the Zota Beach Resort, hope you enjoy your stay with us”, which a true resort employee starts your stay with-- Off to the front desk, which took more than several minutes in line and at the desk, most resorts will ask you for an ID and CC# and you get your room key and a smile in 2-3 minutes, our front desk agent spent the entire time head down typing into the computer for several minutes like we were making some type of foreign currency transaction? Checked into the room and off to the beach bar for very late Lunch at that point, only tables were along the inside wall. We ordered drinks and food, for close to an hour, no food. The outside air temperatures that weekend were in the high 90’s with a heat advisory. For some reason the hotel management decided not to plug in the two wall mounted fans at the bar area. It was unbearable for all customers. We did get a text message on check-in from Zota Management, saying “let us know if we can do anything for you”.. we decided to text back that we were close to an hour with no food. The bartender truly had no empathy, said she would “check on it” went straight back to her blender and kept making drinks. A manager did appear, apologized and magically our food showed up. She comped us Lunch (very much appreciated) We took our Lunch back to our room, and decided to make a Pool Visit, around 4pm. There was not a single chair by the pool. All were taken and the pool was very crowded, we saw two little kids in the pool with their cups of Shirley Temples on the pool deck, they both decided to pour red soda drinks over each other’s heads while in the pool, gross. The rest of the pool was filled with large groups of people drinking from Bubba Mugs, looked like they had been there all day?, who knows what else was in the Pool?? A cabana area had at least 16-20 people standing under the tent for shade, they were pretty loud and pretty drunk Decided to head to the beach, two hotel beach boys were stacking umbrellas and chairs, we asked if we could use them, they said no, there was a charge $30-$ 40? We said that it was close to 4:30pm, they said sorry. We left our tiny folded towels on the beach and went swimming and came out and just sat on the sand At that point we pretty much had enough and decided to leave the hotel, while walking back to our room, we saw that our car was in the parking lot, 3 feet away from workers with concrete mixers and a blue tarp sun tent and with 2 contractor trucks blocking our car. We decided to stay and not try to find another hotel on Longboat Key or Sarasota at 5pm Since we had a late Lunch