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.
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.
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.
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.
If they are rental owners, they have no vote over annual residents. It’s just business to them.
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.
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.