Bring The Big Dog: Loews Miami Beach Hotel

Seven in the morning on 21st Street and the tide is out. The sand is wet and hard and the Atlantic is doing its slow grey-blue thing, and a Labrador the size of a small sofa is running flat out along the waterline with nobody shouting at him to stop. He is not supposed to exist on this coast. South Beach is velvet ropes and door policies and the kind of hotel that measures your dog before it lets him in. Yet a few minutes' walk south, in a big oceanfront resort on Collins Avenue, he has a room, a bed, a tag on the door to say he is in residence, and a dinner coming up from the kitchen later. Loews Miami Beach does not have a weight limit. On Miami Beach that is close to a miracle.

No Scales at the Door

Every dog owner knows the small apology you make crossing a hotel lobby, the tightened lead and the hopeful smile, half expecting to be told that the dog is too big or that pets sleep in the annex by the car park. Leave it at the door here. Most of the rooms welcome dogs, so you are not funnelled into a forgotten wing, and the big soft retrievers, the mastiffs, the Great Danes that get turned away up and down the strip are exactly as welcome as a handbag terrier. Two dogs can share your room, cats are welcome too, and the whole arrangement costs fifty dollars once for the entire stay, not a nightly toll, with no deposit and nothing in the small print waiting at checkout.

The reason it works is that the welcome has a name and a history. Loews Loves Pets has been running across the group long enough to be part of the hotel's character rather than a marketing line, and the staff here have been trained to look after canine guests, which shows in the ease with which they handle a dog at the front desk or on the terrace. We named Loews Miami Beach our Rising Star for 2026 at the Canine Hospitality Awards because this programme arrived fresh from a fifty five million dollar renovation, fully formed and clearly loved.

On Collins Avenue

Loews is big, in the way Miami Beach hotels were always meant to be. Seven hundred and ninety rooms and suites at 1601 Collins Avenue, in the heart of the Art Deco district, with the beach at the end of the garden. The hotel is built around the St. Moritz, the 1939 Deco tower that was restored and folded into the resort, and a newer tower beside it, and the fifty five million dollar renovation has just redone every room. The pool deck is the size of a small park, with cabanas, a jacuzzi and a gate straight onto the sand.

You will not need to leave to eat well. Rao's, the New York institution, has its Miami Beach outpost in the St. Moritz tower. Bistro Collins does the all day dining, Nautilus the drinks, there is a sushi bar, a market for coffee and a sandwich, and Miami Joe for the mornings. Sea Spa on the spa level of the old tower is where you go while the dog is out with the walker.

The Welcome

Your dog arrives to a monogrammed metal bowl on its own mat, a tag for the door so housekeeping knows there is a four legged guest inside, a little tag for the collar, and a treat to say hello. There is a proper bed waiting, real food and water bowls, and poop bags so you never have to go hunting for them. Should you run short of food on a long trip, the hotel sells it, which sounds like a small thing until you have tried to find a decent bag of kibble on Collins Avenue at nine at night. The concierge keeps walking routes, will arrange a dog walker if you have a long lunch planned, and can find a sitter for a proper night out.

Where the dog is allowed to be is what separates a dog friendly hotel from a merely permissive one, and here your dog is part of the hotel rather than hidden in it. Into the lounge, out onto the terraces where the ocean is a few yards away, and settled contentedly in the room while you go down for dinner, because the hotel is happy for a well behaved dog to be left alone. There is even a dedicated dog area on the property, a rare thing at a resort this size and a sign that dogs were designed in rather than bolted on.

Dinner From the Hotel Kitchen

Then there is dinner. Loews puts a room service menu together for dogs, cooked by the same kitchen that feeds you, and it sends a message that no monogrammed bowl can. Your dog is not an afterthought to be fed from a tin on the bathroom floor. Your dog is a guest, and guests here eat well. Order it up after a long day on the sand and watch a tired dog decide that this is the finest hotel on earth.

A Day Here With Your Dog

Set the alarm. The stretch of sand at 21st Street, a few minutes north of the hotel, is the only place on the beach that welcomes dogs off the lead, early in the morning, from seven until nine in the cooler months and nine until eleven through the summer. The city is particular about dogs on the sand, so this is the window, and a dog tearing along the wet sand at sunrise with the whole of the Atlantic to itself is worth getting up for. Afterwards, the paved Beachwalk runs past the hotel's back door for the length of the island, flat and wide and made for a stroll with a lead in one hand and a coffee in the other.

For a walk with the lead on you are spoiled. Lummus Park runs the length of Ocean Drive, a palm lined ribbon of green between the pastel Deco hotels and the dunes, shaded and lively and never boring. At the southern tip of the island, South Pointe Park has a broad promenade along the ship channel where you can watch the cruise liners and the yachts slide past Fisher Island, and the western side of the park is off leash from sunrise until ten in the morning and again from half past four until eight. It is unfenced, so it suits a dog with good recall, and the evening light off the bay is glorious. For a fenced run, Flamingo Bark Park is a mile west on 11th Street, with separate areas for big dogs and small, and a little further out on the Venetian Causeway Belle Isle Bark Park is a quiet island green with two dog runs, shady benches and a fountain at dog height.

Lunch is the easy part. Front Porch Cafe on Ocean Drive is a short walk down the beach, with a patio that looks straight at the ocean and a water bowl that arrives before the menu does. A few blocks inland, Lincoln Road is a car free promenade of restaurants and shops that takes dogs entirely in its stride. CVI.CHE 105 serves some of the best Peruvian food in the city at outdoor tables where dogs are welcome, and just off the road on Lenox Avenue, Yardbird Southern Table and Bar does fried chicken, shrimp and grits and proper Southern comfort under a covered terrace where nobody blinks at a tail beneath the chair. For dinner out together, LT Steak and Seafood at The Betsy on Ocean Drive welcomes dogs on its patio and goes one better with a dog menu of its own, meatballs in broth or grilled salmon or chicken with rice and quinoa, so the two of you can dine out properly.

After a week of sand and salt, South Beach Pet Spa and Grooming on Alton Road, a few blocks west of the hotel, will put the dog back together. And should the worst happen, Veterinary Emergency Group runs a round the clock hospital on Biscayne Boulevard, just across the causeway on the mainland, and Loews keeps the number at the front desk so you are never scrambling for it in a bad moment.

Why It Matters

Miami Beach is one of the hardest places in America to travel with a big dog. The sand is mostly closed to them, the hotels mostly weigh them, and the ones that let them in tend to tuck them away. Loews took the glamour of Collins Avenue and the ocean at the end of the garden and added an open handed, unfussy welcome for dogs of every size, with a programme behind it that has clearly been polished for years. Book it, bring the big dog, and spend the entire stay without once apologising for him.

Good to Know

The bar and the restaurants are kept for people, and the lounge, the terraces and room service take the dog. On the sand, 21st Street is the dog's stretch, off the lead from seven until nine in the cooler months and nine until eleven through the summer, and the rest of the beach is for people.

Read the official Roch Dog review or visit the hotel's website.