Before Hurricane Ian, including Margaritaville’s 254 rooms, there were approximately 2,000 hotel rooms at 43 different locations on Fort Myers Beach. Where does that number stand today, nearly 2 ½ years after Hurricane Ian, and what’s the outlook for the next few years?
Those 43 locations and 2,000 hotel rooms included everything from 4-room boutique hotels like the Sea Gypsy Inn to The Outrigger Resort with its 144 rooms. Today, if visitors and tourists want to stay on the beach they have 873 rooms at 13 locations to choose from.
When the Best Western opens back up (any day now) that resort adds another 74 rooms, bringing the total available up to 947 rooms. That’s just less than 50% of the number of rooms available before Hurricane Ian, again, including Margaritaville which was months from opening before Hurricane Ian.
These statistics have been provided to us by the Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce and are updated frequently. Please note that these statistics are for hotel rooms only and does not include vacation rentals.
A staggering 21 hotel properties with a combined 623 rooms were destroyed by Hurricane Ian. The Chamber reports that of those 623 only Gulfview Manor Resort with 33 rooms and London Bay’s Outrigger property with 100 rooms has started the process to rebuild (The Outrigger had 144 rooms before Ian and there are also condo plans for that property). The Chamber’s destroyed list includes several properties that have been sold and many others that have no clear future.
The Shipwreck (29 rooms) is now a parking lot on Old San Carlos and The Beacon (16 rooms) will soon become a parking lot. It’s safe to assume that a decent number of those 21 destroyed properties will not return. Certainly not as they were before September 28, 2022.
After The Outrigger, the next biggest hotel on the destroyed list was The Wyndham with 103 rooms. Everyone has been watching the Wyndham demo over the past few weeks and there has been nothing discussed about the future of that property.
The Neptune Inn was listed on the Chamber’s temporary closed list. That property was in flux for a while as the owners waited to get approval (or denial) from the town to build a new 126 room resort. Pre-Ian The Neptune had 71 rooms.
With Best Western days away from opening its 74 rooms, it appears the next big influx of rooms would come from The Neptune (126 rooms) which is years away from a ribbon cutting. That leaves Fort Myers Beach about 950 hotel rooms available for visitors and tourists for the next several years.
There a a couple hotel room stats missing from this article to include the large increase of room approved for Myerside Neptune and pink shell This will negate the loss of several of the smaller properties once rebuilt and need to be factored in when approving future request by developers. Some of these smaller properties were already closing pre Ian such as the former Carousel where Gulfside 12 is now. So this is a much more complex issue overall and need to be really looked at by the council. There are also a lot of condo coming back on line that can minimize the lost hotel rooms. Most developer will not try to meet the community with reasonable development and the council has set a terrible example with the projects they have approved basically giving developer whatever they want with limited to no public benefit.
If by “the Beach” you mean the Town of Fort Myers Beach, the more important question would be what are the current tax and building fee revenues to the Town compared to before IAN. Seagate is paying more for just the land than Fran Meyer ever did. All new construction taxes are being adjusted to current market value – a big revenue jump. Traffic- let’s see what happens when Estero Blvd is re-opened in front of MV. If it doesn’t improve dramatically we are in deep sh*t. (They should put temporary pavement down NOW – I don’t know what the hang up is. Looks like they are slow-walking that project)
Well this is what a lot of people want no progress. Impede the rebuilding of the island and the island is suffering from it. The same people complain about the city council and fight all progress. Which by the way are older people who most likely will never see a lot of the future progress because they will bed dead. Those people need to be ignored and the island needs to move forward
No one is against progress. You can rebuild the island without increasing height or density and still have progress. Do you think just because residents don’t want height or density it’s magically going to appear over night? Nothing on this island happens over night whether it’s your type of progress or my type of progress. It’s going to take years whatever it is.
Well, it’s taken a lot longer because of people like yourself complaining and raising non-issues as issues. Who cares about density it’s an island there’s not a lot of land on the island so developers hotels and other things need to build higher. It took over 10 years to get margaritaville. Let the developers build.
Not to your standards.
Crock of s..t
Replying to Dp, just in case Holly is posting.
With less than half… Hotel rooms, Airbnb, VRBO rentals, residential homes & businesses open is traffic worse than before Ian?
Exactly. Why do we have all of this traffic when we have half of the hotels available.?? And all of these empty codos and missing homes since Ian.The Bridge work? Traffic at Margeritiville? Slow drivers?.
Day trippers. It’s always been day trip traffic. Not people staying in a room for a week.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Traffic will always be bad. If you own here you learn to do things around it.
Lots of construction workers. Nowhere to eat or drink on southend. Detour around Mville with incompetent traffic control.
That’s not true. We have food trucks driving up and down the street several times a day. So the construction guys all eat from the trucks. Most of the homes by me have someone drop off the workers in a van and leave them there then the guys eat from the trucks.
Do you think the construction guys are going to stop working and go into a restaurant to eat? Thats a big NO. The food trucks race around and blow their horns so all the construction workers know they are here. They come around for breakfast and lunch.
Is there an economic development plan? Town hall for businesses? What is being done to attract contractors? How are the support monies being spent? Where is the talent to rebuild the island being recruited from?
There are at least 40 % ( My estimation) of the condos and timeshares that remain closed to renting for a variety of reasons. Lack of funds, contractor fraud, and new regulations are the primary reasons being reported by those in charge. One is considering selling and paying out to the owners. The south half of the island will take another year or two to recover. That represents a lot of vacation rental units.
A better question is what are the occupancy rates for hotel rooms or even AirBnBs? The answer is short term rentals are very soft, with an high occupancy rate and low vacancy rate, ask anyone who owns one. Looking at current available hotel rooms and not looking at vacancy or occupancy rates only tells half the story.
We have several of the small VRBO type units in the works. The big hotels are going to be hard to do until the Council and Community come together on a common vision for what the future of the island is.
Rebuilding takes time, but its gaining momentum. It’s going to be Fantastic!
With all the traffic complaints we are hearing, it’s hard to imagine if the beach had 2000 hotel rooms available. How many private short term rentals on the beach? Seems like quite a few and I bet many are not abiding by the short term rental rules for monthly versus weekly street rentals.
The month vs weekly needs to be done away with and make everything weekly. There are some streets that there is one side weekly and the other side monthly. The people that voted for the weekly vs monthly are most likely dead or moved away. Ask any realtor and monthly homes sit longer on the mls and sell for less. They are making so many changes and this is something that needs to be changed! It’s an outdated decision that is just another thing that brings our home values down.
I bought specifically in a monthly only neighborhood. please wait til Im dead to change. Some people will trade quality of life for money
I live here on a monthly only for a reason. A weekly renter is a party every night! I don’t want that PERIOD!
That simply isn’t true. If there are 3 complaints then the owner loses their rental license. So it couldn’t be a party every night. I would rather have a weekly renter that will leave after a week whereas if a neighbor puts in an annual renter, you are stuck with them.I remember there was a family that had 4 kids that were loud and obnoxious and would break things, smash rotten fruit in the road scream. chase cars.etc. They were renters that were there for years. The house they rented was filthy littered with broken down crap in the yard. They had to leave after Ian. Their house was demolished. I would have gladly had vacationers there instead of the dirty kids.
that simply isnt true. There is little enforcement of the monthly rental areas. And many weekly rentals are party every day and night. Little enforcement there either.
NOT TRUE carol. Sounds like you have sour grapes for buying in a monthly zone instead of a weekly zone. That’s on you. Do not cause the rest of the residents that do not want weekly rentals to suffer. In my opinion, all rental rules should be monthly minimum.
I agree with Carol. Everything on the island should be allowed weekly for homes that are not under any HOA rules. Technically the homes in monthly zones are allowed to rent a minimum of 7 days in a month, bet you pro monthly people didn’t know that did you? Obviously not since you aren’t complaining about a “party every night” for ones that only stayed a week instead of a month by you. I’d rather have weekly vacationers by me instead of annual renters. I’ve had some bad annual renters by me, in a weekly rental zone, that were horrible trashy people. They would get into arguments often and surrounding neighbors could hear, they would come home at 1-2 am with their loud car muffler so everyone could hear them arriving back home. The town has a system for short term renter complaints that the owners have to respond to and deal with the complaint. They will lose their rental license after 3 strikes. There’s no system in place for annual renter complaints. This is a tourist beach island and need the tourists to support the local businesses. It’s certainly not the full time residents going out every day spending money at the island restaurants and bars.
I have a very different take on this. The weekly rentals around us are generally great – never a problem. And the beauty is, even if something did come up, it’s resolved quickly when they leave. This island thrives on tourism, and that’s always been the case. We welcome the energy and excitement that vacationers bring! They’re here to enjoy themselves and support our local businesses in a big way, which is fantastic. Compared to longer-term renters who often prepare their own meals and aren’t always around, the economic boost from weekly visitors is significant. If a quiet, close-knit residential vibe is what you’re after, Sanibel might be a better choice. We love the vibrancy our vacationers bring!
I am on board with you. Tourists bring money into our island that annual renters never will. Plus we have had horrible experiences with annual renters. Any of the people living around Dakota remember all the annual renters that lived in that dump at the top of the street. It was a triplex they made into a quadplex. There was always drunks roaming around and it would be worse later in the light. They would get in fights, harrass people that would walk by. It was scary. The town did nothing and the sheriff would not do anything until they were making noise after 10 pm. If they were vacationers would have been out in a week and the neighbors could have complained 3X and the owner would have lost their license. So because the anti vacationers owners think it’s still 1970 they don’t want any change and they want the rest of us to suffer with the annual renters. Eventually those people will die off and a new town council will be voted in and this anti-vacationer mentality will be buried once and for all.
If they are rental owners, they have no vote over annual residents. It’s just business to them.
Wow. What a comment. The monthly people are alive and well Carol. We will continue to monitor and fight people like you who want to rape every last dime from this island and really don’t care about quality of life. Go away please!
The town council doesn’t want hotel’s , they had their chance to approve development’s but
They want high end expensive condo’s.
I wonder what occupancy has been for the rooms available. Any idea?
The town is desperate for more fun and shops. Indoor plumbing, more temperature controlled eating options and a night life. We need a variety of shops. An affordable liquor store;, the sidewalks completed, trained traffic control, and entertainment. Not more unimproved sand parking lots and surf styles. We need investment on the island and not stagnant unimproved buildings. We need FEMA reform .
Add to that more restaurants, especially at the south end. At Santini, four places (at least) to get a coffee and a sandwich, but only two places to get dinner planned at this point. Disappointing! Hope the Beach Theatre turns into a restaurant but no one there Seems to be in a hurry.
They have been working on removing mangroves again at the beach theater, so I am sure they will have something soon but they plans are not welcome news to the surrounding neighborhoods as they want outdoor seating which will be noisy and cause parking issue in the neighborhoods surrounding the theater. We already had issues on a raining day when the beach theater was open. They have not been good neighbors after being sold a d little have changed recently.
I’m sure the FEMA reform is coming soon…..in the manner that it’s no longer there. Can’t wait to see how Florida picks up the pieces.