Which Miami Hotels Actually Sell a Pool Day Pass
By Matt Spaulding · September 2, 2026
Photo: Daniel Christensen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
We checked twenty-six Miami hotels against their own websites to find which ones will sell a non-guest a day by the pool. Seven will. Four refuse in writing. The other fifteen never address the question at all, which in practice is its own answer.
Start with the ones that will, because that is what you came for.
The one that sells you a pool, from its own checkout
The National is the cleanest sale in Miami Beach. Its own site carries a Day Passes item in the navigation, leading to its own store with a live availability calendar: a Pool Day Pass from $55 and a Pool Cabana Day Pass from $350. What you get is a lounger and mattress, poolside towels and umbrella, Wi-Fi, and food and drink service from the Aqua Bar, on what the hotel calls the longest pool in Miami Beach. It is open dawn to dusk.
The $55 is not the number to budget, though. Both products carry a minimum food and beverage spend of $50 per guest, with a service charge and tax on the final bill. So a single pool day starts nearer $105 before either of those is added, and a $350 cabana for three carries $150 of required spending on top. The hotel is also adults-only at 21 and over, and its calendar shows dates selling out well in advance.
Two that sell you sand, not a pool
This distinction costs people their afternoon, because both hotels are famous for their pools and neither is selling you one.
Faena is the only hotel in the set that names non-guests explicitly and publishes a rate card for them, and it is a beach rate. A chaise lounge runs $150 Monday to Thursday and $250 Friday to Sunday; an oceanfront daybed with two chaises is $500 either way, with prices explicitly varying by occupancy and holidays. Beach service runs 10:30 to 5. There is no online checkout — you book it by phone or email — and no non-guest pool rate appears anywhere on the site.
1 Hotel South Beach sells a Beach Experience, 9:30 to 5, with a chair, umbrella, towel, infused water, sunscreen and a bottle of rosé. Its own page then says the quiet part out loud: it "does not include access to the resort pools." That hotel advertises four pools, and this buys none of them. No price is published either, only that a 19% service charge and tax are included in whatever the price turns out to be. When we followed the booking link on 2 September 2026, the reservation page returned no upcoming events, so the product was advertised but not purchasable that day.
Four that hand you to somebody else
Kimpton Surfcomber, The Elser and EAST Miami all sell day access through ResortPass rather than directly, and all three say so on their own pages. EAST puts it most plainly, splitting its call to action between "Not staying in the hotel? Daycation Pass" and a separate link for people who are.
The thing to understand about this group is that you are not buying from the hotel. The price, the cancellation terms and the customer relationship all belong to the marketplace. Where a hotel does quote a figure — The Elser mentions passes starting around $50, or $35 for a lower tier — it is quoting the marketplace's starting price, and "starting at" is doing real work. Surfcomber's cabanas carry a food and beverage minimum its own site mentions but never sizes.
Kimpton EPIC belongs here too, with a caveat: the hotel contradicts itself. One page answers "Does Kimpton EPIC offer day passes for non-overnight guests?" with a yes and a limited summer allocation. Another says access to the rooftop pool is "primarily reserved for hotel guests." Both are on the hotel's own site. Ring before you drive over.
Four that say no, and mean it
The Palms Hotel and Spa gives the flattest refusal: the pool and beach are "exclusively for hotel guests or guests of AVEDA Spa receiving a facial or massage treatment of 50 minutes or more." That is a real door, but a narrow one — hair and nail appointments explicitly do not count.
Fontainebleau requires a room key and a wristband to reach the pool deck, stated in its own pool guidelines. Eden Roc, now trading as Nobu Hotel Miami Beach, says in its FAQ that it does not offer day passes, and routes non-guests to a membership club instead.
W Miami is the most absolute, and for a reason worth knowing: the pool is not the hotel's to sell. The hotel is a tenant in the Icon Brickell complex, the pool belongs to the condominium, and access is "strictly limited to registered guests only." No amount of asking changes that one.
Fifteen that will not answer the question
The rest publish pool hours, cabana photographs, resort fees and dining menus, and never once address whether a non-guest can come in. That includes The Setai, Loews, The Shelborne, The Sagamore, Cadillac Hotel and Beach Club, the Ritz-Carlton South Beach, Four Seasons Miami, SLS LUX Brickell and Hilton Miami Downtown.
Two are worth singling out. InterContinental Miami runs a Daylife page in its top-level navigation and sells a dated poolside product through its own booking engine rather than a marketplace — but never states whether non-guests are eligible, and the checkout never asks for a room number. And Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay is listed on Marriott's own day-pass platform with a photo gallery and no purchasable product, which is worse than not being listed: a reader finds the page, reasonably concludes passes exist, and cannot buy one.
Silence is not neutral here. A hotel that wanted your afternoon business would say so, the way the National and EAST do. Read it as a no you will have to confirm by telephone.
What to do with this
If you want a pool specifically, the National is the only hotel in Miami that will sell you one through its own checkout, and you should budget the food and drink minimum as part of the price rather than a surprise at the end. If a lounger on the sand is really what you want, Faena and 1 Hotel both publish that product, and Faena publishes an actual rate.
If you are staying overnight anyway, check what your nightly fee already covers before you buy anything. Several of these hotels bundle pool access into a mandatory fee — 1 Hotel at $66 a night, the Shelborne at $75, Loews at $50, the Sagamore at $49 — which means you are paying for the pool whether you swim or not. That is the same gate seen from the other side, and it is the reason the Miami hotel with the best pool for your trip is often just the one you are already booked into.
Compare the South Beach and downtown Miami hotels on total cost including that fee, then decide whether a day pass is buying you anything you have not already paid for.
