The Luxe Life

Moreover, a decade later, the term high-end customer no longer automatically connotes the use of pharmaceuticals on that stretch of Collins Avenue. This weekend a king-size bed with an ocean view at the Delano will run you $430 — and nearly double that sum once the winter months and the New York crowd arrive. Even that price may soon be a bargain, though. Peter Loftin has just reopened his Casa Casuarina, formerly Gianni Versace's Ocean Drive mansion, as a private club where the $36,000 initiation fee allows you a crack at one of its ten suites — available at upwards of $4000 a night. One can only imagine the room service charges.

But don't forget about Andre Balazs's Raleigh and his new Standard on the Venetian Islands, or the Pomeranc clan's similarly upscale Sagamore. And those are just the hotels ready to duke it out this season. The looming transformation of the once-dowdy Holiday Inn into a W, as well as the midpriced Roney Plaza's imminent rebirth as a Gansevoort, are more than symbolic upgrades. They're the leading edge of a phenomenon that mirrors the Beach's residential real estate boom — boutique hotels are now less a niche than the city's norm. Which raises a troubling question: Are there enough wealthy travelers to fill all of those high-priced rooms? Or is there an impending bubble of luxury hotels?

For now at least, the hotel numbers mirror those of South Florida's condos. "Miami was one of the top two performers in the nation, with a room rate increase of 11.6 percent over last year," notes Jan Freitag, vice president of Smith Travel Research, which tracks the national lodging industry.

According to Freitag, Miami Beach's luxury hotels had an even higher occupancy rate than New York City's for the period of January to August 2005 — 81.8 percent — with an average daily rate (ADR) of $293. In March, the peak of the season, that ADR soared to $399 — if you could find a room, that is. In fact, with the hotel trade's returns expected to outpace inflation, Freitag sees even more corporate players purchasing buildings in Miami Beach in the coming months and hoping to attract "upper tier" guests. You don't have to take his word for it, though. Simply look to a recent Ocean Drive boutique entrant — the restored Hotel Victor: The Victor may be owned by Hyatt, but you won't see that staid chain's name anywhere on its premises.

"There's a lot of money out there chasing deals," Freitag concludes, "but it's hard to build now because there's very little steel, very little concrete, and apparently very little wood available." With China's growth sucking up all the steel, and "both timber and labor all going to New Orleans, it's easier, cheaper, and faster to buy and convert than to build [from scratch]."

However, not everyone is convinced. "This is a fickle market," warns David Kelsey, president of the South Beach Hotel & Restaurant Business Association. And although he agrees with Freitag that even more money is set to pour into town, Kelsey believes an economic downturn could winnow out the glut of operators now concentrating exclusively on the swanky "carriage trade." Moreover, what Wall Street's free-spending hedge-fund managers giveth, they can just as easily taketh away: "The younger ones with money, the ones that are here because this is a trendy place to party hard — they're going to be happy until the trend moves somewhere else."

Case in point: Saint Barts, the Caribbean isle that was the subject of reams of glossy profiles only a few years ago, now, with fashionistas and celebs having decamped to the latest hot spot, teeters on the edge of the B list. "It's a little bit of a precarious situation to depend on those people," Kelsey adds.

Back at the Delano, Mark Tamis brushes aside such fears. He's already prepared for the shifting winds of hipsterdom. Back in 2003, the Delano owners assumed management of the nearby Shore Club and repositioned it as a destination for a younger crowd fixated on seeing-and-being-seen alongside Jay-Z and Jessica Simpson inside that hotel's glitzy Skybar.

Not that Tamis is prepared to abandon the boldface regulars who have garnered his hotel so much buzz over the years — Jennifer Lopez seems to log more time in the Delano's penthouse than in her own North Bay Road manse. "But we have a different vibe," he explains, one aimed at ensuring that "more experienced travelers" (code for those who own instead of rent summer Hamptons spreads) maintain the Delano on their winter itinerary. Besides, Tamis has a more immediate concern: finding another 200 fresh Granny Smith apples to stock the Delano's rooms.