Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina

The skyline's signature, spinning again

★★★★★📍 17th Street Causeway at the marina, Fort Lauderdale$$$$

The original 1965 tower was Space Age Florida at its most confident — the hexagonal spire, the revolving crown lounge, the marina that made it the yachting set's address — and six decades later the redevelopment treated that legacy as the brief: the spire stands restored at the campus's heart, the Pier Top lounge spins again (one slow revolution per hour — the Intracoastal, port, beach skyline, and sunset conveyor-belting past the cocktails), and the surrounding acreage rebuilt into a modern resort district: new guest towers, private residences, the spa and fitness houses, event lawns, and a marina re-engineered for the superyacht era, slips running to lengths that berth the boat-show headliners. The dining collection opened as a city event in itself — chef-driven rooms, marina-side casual, lobby and pool bars — giving the campus the rare self-sufficiency where a stay never requires the car.

The position is the quiet strategic win: the 17th Street corridor sits between this market's halves — the beach's wave wall three minutes east, Las Olas and downtown ten north, Port Everglades' cruise terminals practically adjacent (the property owns the pre-cruise-night market now), and the Water Taxi's dock folding the resort into the city's floating transit. Marina life supplies the entertainment layer the beach hotels can't: the yacht parade at the docks, boat-show weeks when the slips fill with nine-figure hulls, and the harbor's workaday theater running past the pool terraces.

Booking craft: this is the market's of-the-moment splurge — winter season and boat-show weeks price and book accordingly — with marina-view rooms and suites the signature ask and the Pier Top's sunset seatings the reservation to secure with the room (the lounge's revival made it the city's hardest cocktail table). Cruise travelers should note the sail-day math: the terminals' proximity makes the pre-cruise night here the civilized upgrade over airport-corridor hotels. Book direct.