The conversation must have gone something like this.

“Hello, I’d like a quote from you to renovate my hotel.”

“Right-o, guv’nor. You want to do it in MDF?”

“No, marble. And we’re going to need chandeliers. Big ones. And gold walls.”

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“Well, it’s gonnacostya, mate.”

“Will $1.03 billion be enough?”

And so began what is almost certainly the most expensive hotel renovation in history. Fast-forward several years, smack bang into a global recession, and Miami’s new, shiny Fontainebleau has just opened.

Bad timing, you’d think, but this is an American hotel built on American dreams and American ideals. It doesn’t matter about the (American) recession. They are upbeat. Can we make this hotel the most glamorous playground of the rich and famous, just as it was in its heyday? Yes. We. Can.

I hate to place an ever-so-slightly British spanner in the works, but No. You. Probably. Can’t.

The problem, you see, is one of scale. When the hotel opened in 1954, it was the last word in resort chic. Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley sang there. Jerry Lewis shot The Bellboy there. James Bond had a tetchy game of gin rummy with Goldfinger by the pool. Designed by Morris Lapidus 1,504 rooms.

The renovation is more than a renovation. It’s a total rebuild. Sure, they kept the modernist 1950s shell of the original building — and that pointless staircase — but they also added three new tower blocks, 11 restaurants, a 40,000 sq ft spa and an awful lot of conferencing facilities.

And there you have a problem. In order to fill anything like 1,500 rooms, you need thousands of people, and they can’t all be Frank Sinatra. So, although it looks pretty glamorous (those three chandeliers in the entrance cost a million bucks a pop), the clientele just isn’t.

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