'In Miami, Tourism Rises With the Heat'

"An off-season boom is transforming the city and its environs from a wan summer ghost town into a magnet for visitors." (Miami is no "ghost town" in the summer. That's downright silly and ill-informed.) From The New York Times here.

“Summer here has practically caught up with winter,” said Rolando Aedo, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has seen occupancy rates at luxury hotels jump by 16 percent the first week of August, compared to the same period last year.

Torrid temperatures (the mercury last week climbed to the mid-90s) had done little to scare off visitors, he said, since so many were experiencing heat waves at home. In summer here, he said, “the lines are shorter, the drinks are cheaper, and there’s always a breeze on the beach.”

As a result, the gap between the low and high seasons has conspicuously narrowed, with Miami and Miami Beach welcoming 3 million visitors in the third quarter of this year, compared with 3.4 million in the peak months. Deal hunters and heat seekers alike descended on Lincoln Road, the eight-block-long pedestrian street that is South Beach’s town center, chattering in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian — and a smattering of Brooklynese.

At least half of all visitors are from international markets, Mr. Aedo said, many from Europe but especially Latin America, where, in some parts, winter is just setting in. . . .

At any one of the string of strenuously hip hotels lining Collins Avenue, among them the Raleigh and the Delano, and to the north, the W hotel and the fabled Fontainebleau, visitors gossiped and preened in wispy caftans, eyes darting now and then to catch a glimpse, perhaps, of Cameron Diaz, who has been seen around town on the arm of Alex Rodriguez; Jennifer Lopez, who was said to have embarked last week on a whirlwind shopping spree at Hermès, Dolce & Gabbana, and Pucci; or Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who recently kicked up their heels at the Soho Beach House. . . .

In Midtown, a Miami equivalent of SoHo, Mariano Toledo, the Tim Gunn of “Project Runway Latin America,” dined with Candela Ferro, a television personality, and Nina Surel, an artist, at Gigi, a Bauhaus-like warehouse-turned-restaurant that is a gathering place for local artists, actors and young entrepreneurs.

“Summer or winter, Miami feels fresh,” Mr. Toledo said. “You have the feeling here that everything and anything could be about to happen.” . . .