Lines at the airport, Wynwood crowds —tourists coming to Miami despite surging coronavirus

Dec. 30—Even as daily COVID-19 case counts remain near all-time highs, the Miami area is seeing a surge in holiday travelers looking to break out of their quarantine confines and take advantage of the region’s friendly winter climes.

At Miami International Airport, passenger volumes averaged nearly 68,000 Dec. 24-27, including a pandemic high of more than 84,000 Sunday.

“We have been trending in the 70s and we are starting to see passenger counts in the 80s,” said MIA spokesman Jack Varela.

Miami Beach hotels hit pandemic high

Occupancy on Miami Beach also touched a pandemic high the week ending Dec. 19, the most recent date for which data is available.

“This holiday season, we have seen our hotels and restaurants perform successfully, particularly when compared to past years,” Marco Selva, area vice president for sbe, which oversees properties including the SLS South Beach and the Delano South Beach, said in a statement.

And Goldman Properties CEO and Principal Jessica Goldman Srebnick said Wynwood Walls, which she curates, has seen about 30,000 visitors since reopening Dec. 18. Surrounding businesses have seen as much as a fivefold increase in revenues compared with when it remained closed, she added.

“That says a lot about the market, and visitors’ comfort level in starting slowly to return to some semblance of normalcy with all of the critically important safety precautions we have in place,” she said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to advise against undertaking any travel.

“The safest way to celebrate winter holidays is at home with the people who live with you,” it says on a web page specifically devoted to holiday travel. “Travel and gatherings with family and friends who do not live with you can increase your chances of getting or spreading COVID-19 or the flu.”

Spike in COVID cases in Florida

Florida has been seeing between 8,000 and 10,000 new cases a day for most of December. On Tuesday, the state health department confirmed 12,075 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state’s known total of cases to 1,292,252.

Rolando Aedo, chief operating officer of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, said it is possible to strike a balance between traveling and safety — and that Miami-Dade has more stringent safety measures in place than much of the rest of the state.

“We have masking, we have curfews,” Aedo said. “We are asking visitors to come, but to do so in the utmost responsible way.”

Miami-Dade has the highest number of COVID cases in the state, with 293,188 confirmed cases as of Tuesday, when it reported 2,825 additional cases and nine new deaths, according to Florida’s Department of Health.

Aedo said that between Dec. 22 and Dec. 28, Miami-Dade had booked a pandemic high 180,000 so-called room nights, or the number of rooms available times nights booked.

More tourists expected for bowl games

While that is still down more than one-third from the same period last year, Aedo said he expects a continued upward trend. New Year’s Eve will likely prove another peak, he said, and the Jan. 2 Orange Bowl and Jan. 11 College Football National Championship game, to be played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, will keep momentum strong into January.

But January is likely to see a new surge in cases given the surge in travel we are seeing today, according to Dr. David De La Zerda, a critical care physician at Jackson Health System.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” De La Zerda said of the decision to undertake travel now. He added that the current case surge is the result of individuals having traveled during Thanksgiving.

“If people go out now, by mid-January it’s going to be even worse,” he said. “I don’t think people fully understand that.”

He recommended Florida “go back to square one” to control the pandemic spike, including closing indoor dining and an earlier curfew.

For now, restaurateurs like Eduardo “Lalo” Durazo, managing partner at Jaguar Hospitality, which owns Bakan Mexican restaurant in Wynwood, are making do under the circumstances. He said he has hired a “COVID officer” whose sole job is to enforce safety protocols. Unfortunately, Durazo said, the job continues to be necessary.

“We do run into problems where a customer wants to be seated and enjoy our establishment, but does not want to follow the guidelines,” he said. “That’s where we get push back.”

Durazo said he has seen a noticeable uptick in tourist traffic this month; until then, it had mostly been locals.

Tourists flocking to Wynwood

South Florida resident Mazen Halabi, 39, visited Wynwood Walls and the Urban Graffiti Art Museum Monday. He said he had made a reservation ahead of time so that his visit allowed him and his party to be the only ones there for almost a full hour.

But he said he found the streets “full of people not wearing masks and drunk.”

“We were expecting everyone to be social distancing and respectful, but tourists were in their own world so we took back roads to get to our destination,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the city of Miami did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Albert Garcia, president of the Wynwood Business Improvement District, said some businesses had been issued citations. Still, he believes Wynwood remains safer than other options.

“I think we’ve been successful because we are so outdoor and pedestrian friendly,” he said.