Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach

The pool

• 6th-floor Sky Deck pool
• Atlantic Ocean views
• Heated
• Day passes from $55

Why it's on the list

The Sky Deck pool sits above the beachfront tower with the Atlantic filling the whole view — heated, cabana-lined, full towel-and-bar service, and day passes for anyone not staying. Fort Lauderdale's most-cited hotel pool, and it earns the billing.

The stay

The Conrad is the comeback one — a 24-story Michael Graves tower on the A1A beachfront that spent most of a decade as the Trump hotel that never opened, running through default, foreclosure and auction before Hilton finally flew the Conrad flag in 2017. It's an all-suite condo-hotel, so rooms run large and finishes vary a little unit to unit, and the whole thing points straight at the Atlantic. The signature move is the sixth-floor Sky Deck — a 20,000-square-foot heated pool terrace with cabanas and the Spinnaker grill, lifted over the sand rather than dropped beside it. At $$$ it's Fort Lauderdale's default luxury beach box — book it for the deck and the ocean; the trade is the slightly uneven consistency a condo-hotel brings.