TAMPA, Fla. — An additional 2,000 hotel rooms are being added to the Tampa Bay area. Even with a pandemic on our hands, a big chunk of these new rooms will be done in time for the Super Bowl.
"Tampa is an interesting place because Tampa seems to roll up sleeves when things are not going well,” said CEO and President of Visit Tampa Bay Santiago Corrada.
While some projects were forced to shut down during the pandemic, others stayed full steam ahead.
“Really we've not seen any delays,” Corrada said. “The JW Marriott is still scheduled to open later this year, we have another hotel in Ybor City, Hotel Haya, which will be opening next month, and we have a Hyatt right downtown that’s moving pretty quickly.”
The Hyatt House is expected to be done in early 2021.
"Now, the secret to success is making sure they are busy right? You know get back to 75 percent occupancy, 85 percent occupancy, so they can be successful,” Corrada said.
Corrada hopes the Super Bowl can help with that.
The more than $200 million-dollar JW Marriott Hotel is actually one of two projects that helped Tampa land Super Bowl LV.
“Quite exciting letting people know that we are continuing to move forward even in light of the situation,” Corrada said. “And when you are ready to come see us, we are going to be ready to welcome you.”
But, there's still a lot unknown with the Super Bowl. Even if it happens, there will likely be a decrease in how many people are expected to fly in for it.
But Corrada says these hotel developments were not driven by the Super Bowl, but instead by the long-term growth of the area.
“Hotel developers are smart people, they are going to build hotels where there's a long term impact,” Corrada said. “So yes, it may be an impetus to catalyst to get it done quickly so you can enjoy the Super Bowl, but that hotel has to be open after the Super Bowl and it has to have people staying there and spending money there."
Corrada says he's optimistic and ready for anything.
"We've done plenty of big events in the city and in this county to know that if we had to change course we can, so very confident it will be successful in whatever shape it takes,” Corrada said.
Visit Tampa Bay tells us they've been looking over the economic impact of this pandemic. The current report from U.S. Travel states that next year we should regain about 75 percent of what we've lost.
But that last 25 percent, to get back to the level of tourism we were once at in 2019, is going to take quite a few years.
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