Este artículo fue publicado ayer en español, pero debido a las varias llamadas que hemos recibido solicitándolo en inglés, hoy así lo publicamos.
MIAMI OCTOBER 5, 2021, nhr.com — Those of us involved in the daily news that occurs in Miami Dade County and consequently at Miami International Airport know that they have never been known for doing things with the greatest brevity, and this is proven by the tender for the new hotel at the Miami International Airport (much needed, by the way), since even turtles are faster than the bureaucrats of the airport committee.
Going back a bit, in May 2020, the County Commission authorized a tender seeking proposal to build and operate a new hotel at the Miami airport. The objective of this tender was to be able to choose a project in 90 days and thus take advantage of the shutdown of the airport due to COVID-19 and start the construction process, thus avoiding greater interruptions to the millions of passengers passing through the terminals.
And now 17 months have passed, and the bidding process is apparently stalled thanks to the disinterest of the airport and county bureaucrats.
We have investigated, asked officials and they all agree that they are “inexplicable reasons, everything seems to indicate that neither the current airport director nor his predecessor is interested in building a new hotel, with conference rooms, that could be a source of income very important for the Miami airport, as they are in other large airports nationally and internationally”, they tell us.
Miami International Airport was built in the 50s and has not been operated by any hotel chain; its pool was closed by the same county apparently having guaranteed the county the loss of millions of dollars in lodging. This due to hotel rooms that are not up to market prices, and the lack of amenities does not attract more people to stay at that hotel.
The irony of this situation is that it was the same Miami International Airport that commissioned a study on the hotel where it was clearly established that, due to the current and projected volume of passengers, as well as the type of flight itineraries that connect through of MIA with Central and South America, and the Caribbean, the Miami airport needed TWO new hotels.
MIA is the economic engine of our county, if the committee bureaucrats are not interested in the future of our airport, then we hope our commissioners will care, it is time to “shake the bush” and demand more efficiency.
