Isla Bella Beach Resort & Spa - Florida Keys

The beach

The resort is beautiful, well maintained, white sands with coconut trees, nice beach (although relatively small), great pool and multiple smaller pool spread along the resort so it’s never too crowded, excellent pool bar that serves great cocktails and good food. There are fire tables and live music every evening and the atmosphere is serene. The on site restaurant (Mahina) is very good, offers excellent options. There are fire staff were welcoming and helpful, the room was very comfortable and spacious, equipped with coffee machine and minibar. The resort offers variety of activities- kayak, sap, jet ski, snorkeling, scuba diving… The location for us was great- it’s about 2/3 of the way from Miami to Key West so it’s not too far from either, very convenient drive to KW. Nearby the resort there’s a nice commercial center with supermarket and liquor store so it’s not too was great. Marathon itself isn’t very interesting and in my opinion there aren’t many things to do so if you’re looking for fancier stuff (restaurants, outlets etc.) you’ll have to drive a bit, which for us was fine since we stayed at the resort most of the time. To summarize- beautiful resort, peaceful, high quality, good service, great facilities, beautiful beach and pools, good food, picturesque, place for real vacation and relaxation.

The activities (kayak, scuba etc.) are very expensive.

Great place, customer service excellent

A LOT of mosquitoes

I liked the 5 salt water pools at this resort.

The sheets had mold stains on them, my toddler developed a bad cough during our stay. The first day he coughed a few times during the night our first night, the same our second night, we also did not stay in the room much these days but were at the pools. The proceeding days I noticed he began coughing an hour after we would get back to our room, as soon as we left the room the coughing would disappear outdoors. I cut our stay short by leaving a day earlier as it became evident he was coughing from the mold in the room. In addition on the second day of our stay we discovered that the resort was a mosquito heaven and my son not only got sick from the room and mold but he got bitten up with welts all over his face, legs ect. This despite the citronella bracelets, he wore and me spraying with the bug spray the hotel provided all guests with at check in. At check out I stated why I was checking out a day early and despite my explanation of the mold and son getting sick from it, I was told that I will loose my $400 nightly charge and we left.

The property is beautiful, clean, and updated. There are numerous pools which are well maintained and not very crowded. We ate at the restaurant for breakfast and the pool bar for dinner and the food was excellent. The staff is very friendly.

The beach area is not as beautiful as pictured in the hotel website because there’s so much sea grass/sea weed but that’s not the hotel’s fault.