Some hotels around Miami-Dade reopened Monday. Few guests, but lots of precautions

A sophisticated temperature reader awaited millionaire boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Monday at the newly reopened Fontainebleau Miami Beach.

Mayweather, 43, was one of the first guests at the luxury resort — one of a handful across Miami-Dade that reopened Monday following more than two months of coronavirus shutdowns.

When the fighter checks out, his room will be stripped clean and sprayed with an electrostatic fogger. But this isn’t VIP treatment. At the Fontainebleau, it comes standard. Consider it a sign of the COVID-19 times.

“I know everyone is still cautious and we’ll just take it day by day,” Mayweather told the Miami Herald. “That’s the only thing we can do.”

Mayweather and his entourage are among at least 500 guests booked this week at the mid-Beach hotel, said Fontainebleau President and COO Philip Goldfarb.

The 1,594-room hotel was quiet Monday, but as the beach reopens and tourists begin returning by the bundle, Goldfarb hopes his hotel will reach 50-percent capacity this summer as it eyes a bounce-back in 2021.

Beaches, too, originally were set to reopen Monday. But Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez changed course over the weekend following protests in downtown Miami spurred by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25—the latest in a series of deaths of black men in police custody. Gimenez has not yet said when beaches will reopen.

Mayweather is reportedly paying for Floyd’s funeral and memorial services.

“Hopefully things settle down around the country and we can remove the curfew and reopen the beaches up, because obviously [this] is the Fontainebleau oceanfront resort and we don’t have an ocean front today,” Goldfarb said. “Luckily we have 11 swimming pools here at the Fontainebleau, so I think we’ll make up for that with our guests, but certainly by the weekend it would be very crucial for us to have the beach open.”

Back in business

After nearly three months of shuttering their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic, Miami-Dade hotels were allowed to reopen Monday. While most hotels around the county remained closed, a handful of stalwarts — including the Intercontinental Downtown Miami, Loews South Beach and the Biltmore — began welcoming visitors again, along with a smattering of smaller venues.

As expected, guests were spare. But even a trickle of business is better than the alternative. According to figures provided by the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau and the hotel data firm STR, Miami-Dade hotel room revenues from March-May 2020 are down an estimated 77 percent from the same period last year, from $943 million to $213 million — a drop of $730 million.

Wendy Kallergis, president and CEO of the Greater Miami and the Beaches Hotels Association, spent the day checking in on hotels via telephone and said all of them reported business as “very slow.”

“Reopening is a thoughtful process,” she said. “It’s quiet right now. It’s going to be a slow process, but even though we won’t have any fireworks, July will give us a better sense of where things stand with the virus. For now, travel is going to consist of drive-in visitors and staycations. We’re going to go back to the 1990s, before we had such a strong international tourism. Hopefully by the fall, we’ll be able to start getting domestic meetings back into the hotels.”

At Coral Gables’ Biltmore Hotel, where the furniture in the deserted grand lobby had been discreetly rearranged so that no two chairs were next to each other, reopening started slowly. By 2 p.m., three parties had checked in.

“Are we the first?” guest John Ranivand, of Miami, asked the concierge as he arrived for check-in with friend Elizabeth Bruce, visiting from Virginia.

They were not, but still received an effusive welcome from the front-desk staff.

Ranivand and Bruce are highly ranked amateur competitive ballroom dancers. She flew down on Monday to celebrate Ranivand’s birthday, take a dance class and luxuriate at the Biltmore. The couple had dined at the hotel but never stayed there, they said.

This was not their first trip during the pandemic, either. They recently drove together across the country.

“We’re brave travelers – or stupid,” Bruce joked.

But precautions were everywhere in evidence.

The concierge station was protected by a new plexiglass shield, as was the front desk. Signs abounded throughout the hotel reminding visitors to socially distance, wear masks and wash or sanitize hands frequently. Bathroom door signs indicated only one person was allowed in at a time.

At the poolside restaurant, a bright blue bottle of hand sanitizer sat in the middle of every table; about half a dozen were occupied. But Biltmore staff outnumbered guests. No one was in the pool. A handful of golfers were out on the famed course on the sweltering afternoon.

Large hotels such as the Biltmore and the Fontainebleau were the outliers.

In the downtown/Brickell area, many city of Miami hotels remained closed Monday—but not because of the protests.

Representatives for the SLS Brickell and JW Mariott Marquis said the intention had always been to reopen later in the month in order to be fully prepared for guests.

A representative for one downtown hotel said owners remained unclear about whether the city of Miami was issuing it’s own reopening date for hotels. A representative for the Mayor’s office said late Monday that is not issuing a separate date, meaning that the county’s June 1 order prevails.

Celebration day

William D. Talbert, president and CEO of the GMCVB, spent the day driving around Miami-Dade County in a caravan with his staff, visiting hotels that had reopened with pom-poms, signs and honking horns to celebrate hotel workers, who outnumbered the number of actual guests.

“It was a way to welcome them back,” Talbert said. “A human, person-to-person thing. Everybody was upbeat, thumbs up. It was a good feeling after 77 days of being at home. It was one of those days you want to remember.”

Talbert said that the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd made the group hit pause on some initiatives, such as the launch of the Miami Shines campaign, designed to lure domestic travelers to South Florida for their summer vacations.

He said hotels around the county will open in waves, depending on when their respective managements feel it’s time. Among the hotels with closed doors today are Faena Hotel Miami Beach, Eden Roc Hotel Miami Beach, Kimpton Surfcomber Miami Beach, Ritz-Carlton South Beach, Henrosa Hotel, The Betsy South Beach and Delano South Beach. Most have indicated that they will open later this month or in July.

Hotels and motels can’t reopen until they are able to follow all of the county directives including proper social distancing, enhanced cleaning and staff training.

“For some, it takes a bit of time to physically open,” he said. “Different systems have to be put in place. Some of them have to rehire staff and train new staff. It’s a business decision that each hotel must make for itself.”

Among hotels still closed are Faena Hotel Miami Beach, Eden Roc Hotel Miami Beach, Kimpton Surfcomber Miami Beach, Ritz-Carlton South Beach, Henrosa Hotel, The Betsy South Beach and Delano South Beach. Most plan to open later this month or in July.

The SoBe scene

Patrick Reece and Blake Crawford spent the morning in staff training and making final arrangements as they prepared for the reopening of Royal Palm South Beach.

Staff’s temperature will be taken before shifts, and usual routines have been turned touchless, said Reece, the hotel’s general manager. Areas will be sanitized as guests leave them and all seating clusters are separated by at least six feet of space, as mandated by the county.

“Hopefully we’ve thought of it all,” Reece said. “There’s so much about COVID that we’re still learning and that is still changing.”

Reservations were stronger than expected, with about 40 for the first few days, consistent booking for weekends this month and a spike for Independence Day weekend. Crawford, sales and marketing director, said he expects Miami Beach will see a boost at July 4 because tourists couldn’t come for Memorial Day.

“When you’re coming on leisure, you want to have fun, you want to go out and do different things, so we have taken extra steps to be precautionary and advise guests of the new standards,” he said.

Lennox Miami Beach is among those waiting until later this week to reopen, said Ziad Chantiry, general manager. In the meantime, the hotel is training staff, reorganizing furniture and disinfecting rooms for their first four reservations.

“We’re starting to see some movement which is something that’s very encouraging for the staff and for the ownership,” he said.

The business traveler

Chantiry hopes that domestic travelers and large events in the fall such as Art Basel will help offset revenue loss since March. His property and others in Miami Beach will offer sales to encourage travel because business is so necessary, he said.

The Lennox head concierge attended training by Miami-Dade College today, which is mandatory for all reopening hotels. The new county protocol states that if a worker tests positive for COVID-19, the hotel must be closed for either 14 days from when they were last on site or the time needed for all people in contact with that person to be tested and cleared.

In addition to county protocol, Lennox management is instituting changes such as allowing its guests to only access the gym by appointment so staff can disinfect the room after every use. Visitors can order food on a phone app, so that there is less face-to-face interaction with guests and servers, and concierge service can also be ordered via phone.

“We want to keep our service and the experience as the Lennox personal,” Chantiry said. “We are giving you everything we used to give you before but in a cleaner, safer way.”

Back at the Fontainebleau, Detroit residents Rebecca Colett and Latoya Rucker flew into Miami on vacation and checked into the hotel on Monday.

“We’re going to hang out at the pool,” Colett said. “I’m kind of just ready to do stuff again.”

Naveen Reddy, 56, beat them to it. Poolside, he and his son, Kush, enjoyed refreshments and food while taking in the afternoon sun.

Reddy, who lives in Pasadena, said he tried booking a trip for spring break but hotels were already closing. He said he looks forward to going to the beach when it opens because “I’m not afraid of nothing.”

“I’d rather be free and die of COVID then to be suppressed in my hotel,” he said.

Herald staff writer Rob Wile contributed to this report.