In March 2000, as COVID-19 savaged the local economy, Michigan auto dealer Timothy Zacharias and a traveling companion had Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas district practically to themselves.
Bumped from a cruise in Barbados amid the onset of the pandemic, they took up a temporary residence at a nearly deserted Ritz-Carlton on the beach to await a flight home. On Las Olas Boulevard, they shopped at a boutique, sampled drinks from a still-open restaurant and surveyed shuttered businesses that had laid off countless employees as the coronavirus brought South Florida’s tourism industry to its knees.
“Believe me, I know what it’s like to try to make payroll,” Zacharias, who co-owns two auto dealerships, said at the time. “Think about that — how fragile we are.”
On Wednesday, Zacharias said he’s been a repeat visitor ever since. ”I rent at the Conrad from January to the end of March,” he said by phone. “We’re coming back next week.”
“We go to the Keys,” he added. “I like that part of the state. I like the boating and the shopping. It’s an awesome area. This is our fourth season. It’s a pretty neat deal.”
Zacharias is among millions of tourists who have returned to the region as the pandemic eased its grip, allowing hotels to reopen, cruise lines to return to local ports, and airlines to resume full schedules.
Now. Broward County hoteliers, restaurateurs and public officials all say they are looking forward to a third straight year of profitable visitor traffic in 2024. But they are still mindful that competition from elsewhere around the state and South Florida, as well as external factors such as inflation and even politics, requires proactive measures to keep the Greater Fort Lauderdale area fresh in the minds of tourists who have lots of choices for spending their travel dollars.
Year of the “reset”
Although 2023 was mostly a year to the upside for Broward’s hospitality industry, last year was largely a “reset” when measured against the strong rebound years of 2021 and 2022, analysts say.
Visit Lauderdale points to a high watermark level of $125 million for tourist tax collections in 2023. And the new year appears to be off to a good start with year-to-date figures for January showing hotel occupancy up fractionally to 74.3%.
For most Florida destinations, “2023 was basically a flat year,” said Daryl Cronk, an Orlando-based hospitality analyst for Costar.
Compared with 2022, he said, “most of your key indicators were essentially unchanged.”
“Much of Florida did a little bit of what we called a year of normalization or reset,” he said. “Places like Fort Lauderdale and South Florida did really well in 2021 and 2022.”
That’s because for an extended period of time, people were not taking cruises or traveling internationally due to COVID-generated health restrictions. Florida found itself nearly alone as a preferred destination as it was among the first states to dispose of most COVID health restrictions, allowing businesses to reopen ahead of other states.
Last year, competition for tourists returned as many rival destinations, both foreign and domestic, reopened and attracted many of the visitors who previously vacationed in Florida.
Encouraging 2024 outlook
Still, local promoters, officials and analysts like Broward County’s 2024 growth prospects.
“While additional markets are actively open worldwide, South Florida remains and will continue to be one of those large international destinations that are attractive to sunny weather travelers,” said Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy, who is also a member of the county’s Tourist Development Council. “We also have a super strong domestic market. Americans from all over the different states will come to Hollywood Beach and Fort Lauderdale Beach to enjoy an accessible vacation. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is a very easy airport to connect to domestically. It plays a big part in their decision of where to travel both in price and in ease.”
Cronk of Costar sees growth reigniting statewide.
“In general we think 2024 is going to be a year that the market kind of begins to grow again,” he said. “We are looking for average daily room rates and occupancy to both grow this year in the 1% to 3% range — fairly modest growth for the year.”
Peter Ricci, director of the hospitality and management program at Florida Atlantic University, said he’s optimistic because many hoteliers got off to a good start in January.
“I’m very positive entering 2024,” he said. “I think we are going to have a good year, at least as good as 2023.”
But wars abroad and inflation perpetuate uncertainties surrounding the economy.
“Going into 2024 there is no first quarter post-COVID expected bump,” he said. “But everyone is telling me their Januaries are very strong.”
Prominent hotels are optimistic.
The Seminole Tribe’s hotel and gambling businesses in Broward expect an uptick in 2024.
“The new games — craps, roulette and sports betting — are expected to attract more tourists to Seminole Casinos in Florida, including the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood,” said spokesman Gary Bitner.
The Riverside Hotel, the centerpiece hotel in the Las Olas district, expects a ”good repeat performance of 2023, which was a good year,” said general manager Heiko Dobrikow.
“The winter season has looked tremendous,” he said. “We are getting the occupancies, and our prayers for snow in the north are being answered. The moment it snows you see how the people jump on the plane and come down to Florida. The cruise customers are back.”
“I foresee the summer is going to be the regular summer we had in 2023,” he added. “We can hold on rates and the occupancy will not suffer.”
Keeping it fresh
Nonetheless, the need to promote Broward is front and center in officials’ minds.
“We have to continue investing in the destination,” Levy said.
In mid-January, Visit Lauderdale, the county’s tourism promotion agency, laid out a New Year-to-New Year plan for drawing tourists from a variety of U.S. markets and from abroad.
At a pep rally-styled lunch that drew 400 mainly industry figures to the Broward County Convention Center, the agency, led by President/CEO Stacy Ritter, unveiled a five-point program for keeping the area’s prominent attractions visible to would-be travelers.
After a thundering lead-in by a contingent of the Dillard High School Marching Band, Ritter talked up 2023 as a banner year.
“Frankly it was one of the best years for visitation in the history of Greater Fort Lauderdale,” she told the audience. “But we are not going to stop on our laurels or put it on autopilot.”
The plan, approved by the tourist council, envisions more mileage from Visit Lauderdale’s existing “Everyone Under The Sun” campaign. The idea is to amplify the county’s position as an “inclusive and welcoming destination” with a new tagline, “Come Be You.”
The five-point program designed to raise Greater Fort Lauderdale’s visibility and generate new business is already under way.
It includes outreach to a number of markets across the country, a diversity-and-inclusion initiative designed to reinforce the county’s message that minorities are welcome, and a destination anthem called “Laudy Dayo,” written and performed by local entertainer Alexander Star.
The agency is also targeting group business, announcing a commitment from an annual travel convention that will host 6,000 people in 2026.
The promotional initiative got its start on Jan. 1 when Greater Fort Lauderdale was featured on a float in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif. The float riders, according to Ritter, were people who represented the region’s “rich cultural heritage.” The float played before a TV audience of 26 million viewers, she said.
Package deals
The private transportation sector is making its mark on generating business.
JetBlue Vacations, an arm of New York-based JetBlue Airways, says South Florida has emerged as a strength for passenger traffic since COVID-19. The vacation packaging company, based in Dania Beach, bundles air travel with hotels, resorts and car rentals for travelers.
“Fort Lauderdale has been a big part of JetBlue’s history from the beginning,” said Andres Barry, president of JetBlue Vacations. “We continue to see large lines of customers going there. There was a shift during the early days of the pandemic of people going to Florida. We see a lot of strength in Florida. I wouldn’t be concerned in terms of how we’re forecasting there.”
A surge in business started in 2021 and 2022, he said, with bookings hitting “astronomical numbers” that have been sustained ever since.
If there is any obstacle, it’s a gap in hotel rooms.
“So now, demand is higher and the supply of hotels is relatively flat,” Barry added. “It ends up that supply is the biggest constraint.”
Hotels and cruises a natural mix
Between now and 2026, some 20 new hotels are scheduled to enter the market, according to Visit Lauderdale data.
The latest, the Aloft Hotel Fort Lauderdale Airport, conducted its grand opening on Jan. 24. The hotel’s main goal is to attract cruise passengers traveling in and out of Port Everglades.
“We’ve found that 90% of our guests are domestic travelers, primarily from the Northeast, and, interestingly, from western states like Colorado, Arizona, and the Pacific Northwest,” James Lalanne, the general manager, said in an email.
“About 75% of our guests stay here one or two nights and choose this location specifically due to our close proximity to Port Everglades,” he said. “This has been an ideal location for Aloft to service these cruise-bound guests.”
Since COVID-19, the menu of cruise lines visiting Port Everglades has undergone an upgrade, with 12 lines using the port. Many cater to higher income customers.
Carnival Corp’s upscale Princess and Holland America operators are among luxury lines calling at the port, along with the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, Silversea Cruises, Azamara Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises, Cunard, Viking Cruises and Royal Caribbean International. Disney Cruise Line inaugurated service late last year.
According to a report released by the Florida Ports Council, Port Everglades ranked third behind PortMiami and Port Canaveral in 2023 with slightly more than 3 million cruise passengers. PortMiami recorded 7.3 million while Port Canaveral checked in with 6.92 million.
In 2021, the pandemic depressed the total cruise passenger numbers in Florida to 747,488. In 2022, the traffic recovered to 10.8 million.
Conference, group business
While absorbing Visit Lauderdale’s marketing plan for 2024, the agency’s lunch guests were able to view the progress of the convention center’s redevelopment, which includes an 800-room Omni Hotel.
Ritter announced that in May 2026, well after the redevelopment project is completed, the center will host the U.S. Travel Association’s annual IPW conference of 6,000 travel buyers and journalists from 70 countries. They will be buying 20,000 room nights.
She asked the audience to start getting out the word — now.
“This is an incredible opportunity to show off our destination and put our best foot forward,” she said. “I implore you, get ready. This is why we built it. Because we knew if we did they would come and they are. So let’s do all that we can to roll out the red carpet, be our best and impress some of the most influential travel professionals in the business.”
But well before the travel industry people arrive, a bigger conference is scheduled in Hollywood on April 2-4: The annual 10X Growth Conference sponsored by Grant Cardone, the real estate investor and private equity fund manager. He, too, is expecting 6,000 people, but at the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood. .
Cardone said he drew 12,000 to last year’s conference, which was in Las Vegas. But when he asked the audience of investors and business owners where they wanted to meet next, “90% of the room wanted to go to Miami,” he recalled.
“People want to be down here,” said Cardone, who lives in Golden Beach. “They like the water. The weather in March is phenomenal. Broward County is phenomenal because it’s easier to move around in — much easier than Dade is.”
His economic impact estimate: $40 million to $50 million in revenue from sales taxes, hotel and food bills, and travel.
All told, both conferences are likely to help salve the wounds incurred when sponsors of a half-dozen conferences moved their events away from Broward, citing political divisiveness in the state over race and in-migration issues .They won’t be back.
“Unfortunately, the cancellations from the groups previously referenced were final,” Visit Lauderdale said in an emailed response to questions. “That said, the effectiveness of our ‘Everything Under the Sun’ campaign and our long-standing relationships with marginalized communities (i.e., LGBT+ and underrepresented minority groups) have helped to mitigate the impact of such cancellations.”
Those groups, the agency said, “have the second and third highest conversion rates of the 34 groups of association business in Greater Fort Lauderdale.”