Miami tourism is up, despite Irma. Would a convention center hotel make it even better?
A record number of tourists visited Miami this past year despite Hurricane Irma, according to new data released by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The bureau celebrated Miami’s resilience after the storm at its annual meeting Friday, highlighting the slight increase in tourism to Miami-Dade despite airport closures and major flooding during Hurricane Irma. About 16 million tourists stayed overnight in Miami-Dade between September 2017 to August 2018, a 1 percent increase from the previous year.
Spending was up 2 percent, as visitors to Miami-Dade spent $26.5 billion from September 2017 to August 2018. The number of tourism jobs was up slightly between 2017 and 2018, growing by 0.4 percent to 142,800. The bureau attributes its success to its “Hotels First” and “Found in Miami” marketing campaigns, which position hotels as the focal point for Miami vacationers and urge visitors to get to know Miami’s diverse neighborhoods.
But the bureau focused most of its attention on the future at its annual meeting Friday, using pom poms and cheerleaders to urge attendees to get out the vote in favor of the Miami Beach convention center hotel proposal, which will appear on the Nov. 6 ballot in Miami Beach. William D. Talbert, III, president and CEO of the county’s tourism marketing arm, unveiled voting booth replicas on stage, reminding attendees of bureau estimates that the region lost $130 million in business in 2017 because the convention center lacks a connected hotel.
“We are losing business to competing destinations offering updated convention centers with not just one, but sometimes two or three convention center headquarter hotels,” said Talbert said in a statement.
The convention center itself has recently finished a $620 million renovation and expansion, a project Talbert calls “the crown-jewel of tourism infrastructure investment.” But the bureau argues the project is incomplete without the connecting hotel, which would attract more companies interested in hosting large conferences. Hotel opponents say it will exacerbate traffic and parking problems in Miami Beach, but developers have promised that the design would mitigate those problems.
The hotel proposal needs approval from 60 percent of Miami Beach voters to become a reality. Two previous convention center hotel proposals in 2015 and 2013 failed.
“We need the new hotel to satisfy not only the demand but the absolute necessity to have something connected to the convention center,” said bureau chairman Bruce Orosz. “We need to finish the job, and it’s up to everybody here. We need to bring it home.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2018 at 2:39 PM.