Arthur's Blog: Call Me Naive, But I Feel Confident About Naming Miami Among 2013's Hot Travel Destinations

In drawing up a recent list of the hot travel destinations for 2013 -- the places expected to enjoy the sharpest rise in their incoming tourism -- I got hit by a barrage of dissent when I included Miami and Miami Beach, Florida. Ridiculous! cried a number of readers. Dubai is the kind of place that deserves mention -- it's booming beyond doubt, they said. But Miami?

Today's blog is therefore by way of defending my choice, and a subtle means of suggesting a vacation trip for yourself in the immediate months ahead.

To begin with, the statistics are unmistakable and un-refutable. The Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau has flatly gone on record in stating that 2013 will see a record-breaking number of tourists to Miami and vicinity -- so many South Americans among them (especially from Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela) that the nearby Ft. Lauderdale tourist agency will soon open an expensive office in Rio or Sao Paulo. Miami's hotel capacity is now up by more than 7,000 rooms from the year 2008.

What's drawing them here? Well apart from the delicious weather and the safety that U.S. real estate and banks offer to those South Americans, there's been a surge of construction in the fields that serve tourism. The opening in November of the ultra-luxurious ($500 a night per room) SLS South Beach Hotel was perhaps the nation's top hotel event of 2012, as was the completion of the new St. Regis in Bal Harbour. The cruise terminals in both Miami and nearby Port Everglades received refurbishing treatment valued at over $50M. One recent development of major significance was the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center, home to Michael Tilson Thomas' New World Symphony, which has created an extraordinary free cultural opportunity with its "wallcasts" where people sit outside on the lawn to watch concert simulcasts projected on a huge blank area of the building's facade. And finally, new hotels are going up all over the city: an Aloft property by Starwood Hotels, a boutique lodging called the Lennox Hotel across from the Setai, the Edison and a new Marriott, and a mammoth revamp of the famous Doral Resort.

Add to all this a souped-up schedule of festivals and boat shows occurring almost every two weeks in winter, and you have a jumping scene that's fun to experience. 

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that my wife and I stayed here for a time  (in a rented condo) last winter, and were especially impressed by a blossoming cuisine scene that had scattered multiple Peruvian restaurants, in particular, across large areas of the city. I rhapsodized at that time about the Mistura in north Beach and its classic dish of aji de gallina. We are considering a return visit later this winter, when we will be among the sharply increased number of visitors who have made Miami and Miami Beach into a hot destination. While the rest of the country emerges only slowly from the recession of 2009-2010, Miami seems to be booming at a record pace. I feel confident in correctly including it among the stars of this year's tourism.