2 Best places to stay in Miami’s South Beach

The Standard Miami Beach sizzles like a sexy beach party. The resort’s mid-century design is sprinkled with endearing kitsch touches and a winning focus on the al fresco, including the city’s hippest open-air hydrotherapy playground. It comes with a vast waterfront infinity pool, an icy arctic plunge, high-pressure hoses and bayside soaking tubs, where the local body-beautifuls spend their downtime.

The mood sashays from whimsical – there’s a labyrinthine zen garden with a solar circle for meditation – to risque – those using the outdoor mud lounge tend to discard clothing to smear its healing red, ochre and green clays all over. It’s daring, but also deadly serious about wellness.

Top-notch instructors guide guests through an inventive fitness programme from morning yoga on the dock to state-of-the-art Peloton spin classes, while the Lido Bayside Grill serves some of the best stealth-health dishes you’ll ever eat including incredible vegan burgers.

Filmmakers Baz Luhrmann and his Academy Award-winning designer wife Catherine Martin were creative consultants for this fabulously OTT hotel. They took inspiration from their film collaboration, The Great Gatsby, to create interiors that are a shimmering symphony of red, gold and tiger print.

An extraordinary collection of contemporary art is sprinkled through the hotel, including a Damien Hirst sculpture of a woolly mammoth skeleton, dipped in 24-carat gold. Standing poolside, it adds a unique edge to views of the sky-blue Atlantic, bone-white beach and swishing palm trees.

The Tierra Santa Healing House spa is an equally theatrical affair, commanding 22,000sq ft of the third floor. This ensures plenty of room for one of the east coast’s largest hammams, spectacularly clad with slabs of twinkling Amazonite, a precious gemstone with healing properties.

Treatments take their cues from South America as well as Asia, so the team includes intuitive shamans who employ the magical powers of Nepalese singing bowls, handmade from seven different metals to ensure a perfect fine tune. This is not the place for shrinking violets.