Business: Ebb Tide at Miami Beach

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One reason for the decline is the popularity of competing resorts. While the number of hotel rooms in Miami Beach fell by 3,000 during the past decade, Las Vegas added 15,000 and Hawaii, prospering on cheap air charters, increased its total by more than 27,000 rooms. Low-cost tourist packages ($319 for travel and lodging in London; only $355 for a return flight from New York to Casablanca) have drawn away the younger set, while retired sun seekers have been lured to Mexico, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. The surprising boom of the Caribbean cruise business added to the damage; many a visitor this winter will merely ride through the Miami area en route from mainland airport to cruise-ship dock. A helter-skelter condominium boom that began in Miami Beach in the early '60s siphoned off tourists who had been paying $60 a day in the better hotels for the winter season. The result, as Hal Cohen, executive director of the Beach's Tourist Development Authority, explains, is that "hotels must now sell a room to six different people that formerly went to one."

The latest blow has been the extraordinary success of the Walt Disney World theme park and entertainment center at Orlando, 240 miles to the north. The 27,400-acre complex, which opened in 1971, sports three Disney hotels, with an occupancy rate of about 97%, three golf courses and assorted attractions that make it, according to its owners, the No. 1 tourist destination in the world. More than 13 million visitors came in 1976, and attendance in this year's fourth quarter is up 7.4% over a year ago. Moreover, the Disney complex, which grossed almost $255 million last year, drew other hoteliers and so has driven the price of land from $200 an acre in 1971 to as much as $100,000 today. With almost 40,000 first-class rooms, Orlando's hotels are attracting some conventions, notably the 1978 congress of the International Chamber of Commerce. Walt Disney World is adding 144 rooms to one of its existing hotels and is contemplating construction of yet another hostelry. "We were cut off at the pass by Disney World," laments L. A. Baker, executive vice president of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce.