The Concierge Is a Dog: InterContinental Miami

It is five o'clock on a Wednesday and the Bayside Terrace of the InterContinental Miami has stopped being a hotel terrace. It is full of dogs. A member of staff is working the crowd with a tray of red cups, and a cream poodle in a tropical bandana has her nose in one before it reaches the floor. The humans have cocktails, Biscayne Bay is doing its evening thing behind the railings, the cruise ships are sliding out of the port, and the stalls along the wall are doing a brisk trade in bandanas. This is Paws Patio, and it has happened every Wednesday, free, weather permitting, for more than five years. Most hotels that call themselves dog friendly mean that a dog is permitted. This one means that the dogs run the place, and the humans are allowed to come along.

Paws Patio is the fixed point of downtown Miami's dog calendar. From five until seven the waterfront terrace has cool down fountains, barktails for the owners, free pup cups for the dogs, and local makers selling leads, treats and dog fashion you only find in Miami. Nobody books. Locals wander in after work, guests wander down from their rooms, and the special editions are worth planning a trip around: a Yorkie meet up, a Howl-o-Ween costume party and, in December, an ugly sweater night. For a visiting dog it is a holiday with friends in it.

The star of that film is Rocco, the most famous dog in Miami and the InterContinental's own Paw d'Or Dog Concierge. He is the face of everything this hotel does for dogs, and he has a second job that every guest who arrives with one gets to use, which we come to below.

The Setting

The hotel stands at 100 Chopin Plaza, on the water's edge of downtown Miami at Biscayne Bay. Directly across the street is Bayfront Park, with Bayside Marketplace a short walk along the water and the Port of Miami across the bay, so the view from the upper floors is ships, islands and open water. Brickell, the city's restaurant district, is a few minutes south on foot. You are in the middle of a big city, and the first walk of the morning is still grass, palms and sea air.

The Hotel Itself

The InterContinental Miami was built in 1982, and the hotel tells the story itself: it began with a sculpture rather than ending with one. The building was first designed to be a casino, and the architect Pietro Belluschi shaped its 34 stories and its Grand Lobby around Henry Moore's Spindle, eighteen feet and seventy tons of travertine marble that still rises through the centre of the lobby, set among Italian marble and African wood. The suites at the top were first decorated and named for President Ronald Reagan, and they survive today as the Royal Palm and Presidential Suites.

There are 652 rooms, including 22 suites, newly redesigned, looking over the city or the bay. On the fifth floor, beside the pool deck and its cabanas, is SkyLawn, some 35,000 square feet of rooftop green above Biscayne Bay. The restaurant is Toro Toro, Richard Sandoval's Pan-Latin steakhouse, and around it are Olé, the rooftop bar Bluewater, Freddy's Speakeasy and mySpa. It holds the AAA Four Diamond award, and Newsweek named it the number one pet friendly hotel in the United States in 2025.

The Welcome

The welcome starts at the desk, where there is a jar of treats and a team that long ago stopped being surprised by a dog in the lobby. The hotel sets no weight limit at all, so the mastiff is as welcome as the Maltese, every one of the rooms takes dogs, cats are welcome too, and two dogs may share your room, for a flat pet fee of $100 for the whole stay. In the room there is a bed and proper bowls, and the custom InterContinental Miami bandana that half the dogs in the Paws Patio photographs are wearing.

Book the Pets and Points package and the dog arrives to a curated welcome box, with dehydrated chicken chips from a small local maker and the bandana inside, along with a bonus of IHG points for you and half off the pet fee. The concierge will arrange walking, sitting and even grooming, and the things you hope never to need are in place as well: a formal partnership with Chewy Vet Care, a vet on call for emergencies, and insurance that specifically covers canine guests.

"I wanted to create a space where our own dogs would feel like they had died and gone to heaven." That is Gina Genna, who leads the hotel and built the programme with her own dogs in mind. We sat down with her to talk about how a grand city hotel on the bay became the most dog friendly hotel on earth, and that one sentence is the short version.

The Concierge Is a Dog

Every great hotel has a concierge, and the InterContinental Miami has two. The human one at the desk has Miami's best dog sitters on speed dial. The other is Rocco, the dog in the film above, and his title is Paw d'Or Dog Concierge, a nod to Clefs d'Or, the golden keys the best concierges in the world wear on their lapels. Rocco arrives in your pocket on check in, over WhatsApp, and he answers in his own voice at any hour of the day or night.

Ask him for the nearest dog beach and he sends you to the right one. Ask for somewhere to eat with the dog tonight and he gives you the closest patios in Brickell, not a list copied from the internet. He knows the room service dog menu and how to order from it, he will put you in touch with Luxe Leashes, the walkers and sitters the hotel trusts, he knows which Wednesday at Paws Patio is a costume party, and he will email you a plan for the day with your dog in it. For a small worry there is the hotel's Chewy Vet Care chat, and for a real one he gives you an emergency vet that is open at two in the morning, straight away, before anything else. He does all of it in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German or Italian. Travelling with a dog in a strange city is mostly a series of small questions, and here every one has an answer waiting.

Dinner Under a Cloche

The in-room canine menu is cooked in the hotel kitchen and sent up under a silver cloche like any other room service order. The Pampered Pup Chicken Plate is organic chicken, gently cooked with nothing added, served with fresh raw carrots in a small bowl. The Luxe Pup Steak Bowl is chopped steak, simply prepared, with crisp carrots on the side. It is a highlight of our guide to the world's best hotel dog menus for its good sense: plain food a dog can eat every night of a stay. You dial zero, say what the dog is having, and a tired dog ends the day the way its owner does.

A Day Here With Your Dog

Start across the street. Bayfront Park has a fenced dog run, water fountains and bag stations, and it is where every dog in the building goes first thing, before a turn along the palm lined Baywalk at the foot of the hotel. For the beach, the one that matters is Hobie Beach on the Rickenbacker Causeway, a short drive away, where dogs are welcome off the lead in the shallow water with the whole skyline behind them. It is far closer than the dog beach at Haulover on the Miami Beach side.

Lunch is a stroll to Bayside Marketplace, an open air waterfront mall where most of the outdoor tables will take a dog. Dinner is Brickell, where the hotel's own guests eat with their dogs. Pura Vida on Brickell Avenue is the easy breakfast and lunch spot with pavement seating. The Henry at Brickell City Centre keeps water and treats for dogs on its front patio. Balan's on South Miami Avenue has a dog menu of its own on the patio, and a few doors down Dolores But You Can Call Me Lolita puts out water bowls and mats on its terrace. Should the worst happen, Veterinary Emergency Group on Biscayne Boulevard is open around the clock, and Rocco has the number before you have to ask for it. Then it is back for Paws Patio if it is Wednesday, and dinner under a cloche if it is not.

Why It Matters

A grand tower on the water with a rooftop pool and a Henry Moore in the lobby could easily have tolerated dogs politely and left it there. Instead it built them a weekly party, a kitchen menu, a concierge and a vet partnership, in a city not famous for letting dogs in anywhere. Come down to the terrace on a Wednesday evening, when the bay turns gold behind a crowd of wagging tails, and you will understand it in five minutes. Book it, ask for the Pets and Points package, and plan your week around Wednesday.

Good to Know

Dogs stay on a lead around the hotel outside your room, and the restaurants, the pool deck, mySpa and the fitness centre are kept for people, which room service, the terrace and Bayfront Park take care of. Miami asks owners to pick up after their dogs, and the sand on South Beach itself is closed to dogs, which is why Hobie is the beach to know.

The InterContinental Miami scored a Roch Rank of A+. Read the official Roch Dog review or visit the hotel's website.