An ambitious renovation of Broward County’s convention center, which has been years in the making, will be unveiled at one of the region’s biggest money-making tourism events: the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.
The public will gets its first glimpse of the center’s expanded exhibition hall at a time when tourism is struggling to rebound from the pandemic. As conventions start to return and new hotels open, there are finally reasons to be optimistic.
Officials from the county and the show said Thursday that the convention center will open the doors to its hall when the boat show kicks off Oct. 27. And the rest of the expanded center is scheduled for completion by 2025.
Over the years, the venue has attracted thousands of marine enthusiasts annually to Fort Lauderdale. But the last time the show exhibited at the center was in 2019. It was not available last year because of the redevelopment project. A show did take place in 2020, at venues along the Intracoastal Waterway; but it was forced to scale back because of COVID-19.
Now there is a renewed air of confidence about the convention center, and tourism in general.
“We are excited and optimistic about the reopening [of the center] and look forward to the future development with the economic benefits it brings to the community,” said Philip Purcell, CEO and president of the Marine Industries Association of South Florida, which owns the boat show.
Since last spring, leisure travelers weary of being cooped up by pandemic-driven restrictions have been returning to South Florida in large numbers, despite increases in new COVID cases in Florida and uneven levels of travel elsewhere around the nation.
The evidence of a rebound has taken the form of more people traveling and filling hotel rooms and higher room rates than elsewhere in the country.
“Our market is the exception, not the norm,” said Alan Cohen, assistant county administrator. “South Florida and other southern locations did extremely better than the rest of the country because international travel was cut off both ways and people chose to go to the beach.”
Meanwhile, more hotels are coming by the end of the year in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The AC Hotel Fort Lauderdale Airport, a 154-room hotel under the Marriott umbrella, is among them. It opened this week in Dania Beach in the city’s expansive Dania Pointe development.
Mychal Milian, the general manager, said the hotel hopes to attract mainly leisure travelers, including cruise line passengers who pass through Fort Lauderdale on their way to their ships at Port Everglades. More often than not, many spend time visiting the area before or after their cruises.
“Now that we’re open, we are seeing some reservations trickle in,” he said. Rates are likely to go higher during the weekends in October.
For now, Milian said, hotels are seeing drive-in tourists from other parts of the state, with many booking rooms just two or three days ahead of their arrivals as opposed to 10 to 14 days.
Last week, the oceanfront Diplomat Hotel & Resort in Hollywood, the county’s largest hotel, hosted the annual Florida Governor’s Conference on Tourism, a VisitFlorida sponsored event that attracted 600 to 700 hotel general managers and other industry professionals.
The mood there, according to people who attended, was upbeat.
“I got the impression 2021 will be a very good year for everyone,” said Peter Ricci, director of hospitality management programs at Florida Atlantic University. “The industry is definitely bouncing back. I feel very upbeat about September because there are still a lot of people who haven’t been able to get away for a weekend.”
And Stacy Ritter, president and CEO of Visit Lauderdale, Broward County’s tourism promotion arm, said, “We had a record-breaking summer thanks to high demand for hotel rooms created by the pent-up demand for travel.”
“It is not a secret that September is Greater Fort Lauderdale’s slowest month of the year,” she added. “Between kids returning to school and peak hurricane season, we typically see business slow down starting in August.”
“Aside from those normal situations, the desire to travel is still there for many Americans,” Ritter said.
What if you live here? There’s good news there, too. Ritter said now is the time for local residents to take advantage of savings programs offered by hotels and other attractions via the agency’s LauderDeals program.
Despite the good news about tourists returning, the news isn’t all rosy. Many businesses are not quite ready to restore their travel plans.
Business travel has dropped heavily since the pandemic started as corporations, associations, governments and other groups decided to use technology to bring together employees, peer groups and customers.
Earlier this week, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, a Washington-based trade group that is lobbying for federal financial aid to the ailing industry, said it anticipates Florida’s hotel industry will end 2021 down nearly 61%, or $5.3 billion, in business travel revenue compared with 2019.
“Florida is a top destination for national and international business travel, and our hotels and restaurants rely on that revenue,” said Carol Dover, president and CEO of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, an arm of the national group.
“While leisure travel returned this year — in some regions higher than even 2019’s record figures — business travel still remains down overall, and Florida is projected to end 2021 with the second highest losses in the nation, behind only the state of California.”
The silver lining for South Florida is that the conference and exhibition business is showing signs of recovery.
Work on the rest of the expansion project at the convention center should be finished by 2025. Late last year, the county placed a temporary hold on two parts of the redevelopment:
A new stand-alone building that adds meeting room space and a ballroom, with kitchen and commissary facilities to serve the entire complex.
A new 800-room hotel on the north side adjacent to 17th Street Causeway.
Now that the economy is recovering, and financial markets are looking favorably toward other large projects nationally, the county has resumed work on the delayed east side portions, said Cohen, the assistant county administrator.
“We knew there was uncertainty in the funding market,” he said. “We now see that the uncertainty has dissipated.”
