Skift Take
For now, things are stable for hotels and cruise lines in South Florida. If the Zika virus continues to spread during the period leading up to the winter, which is the area's peak tourism period, this may quickly change.
As the Zika virus has spread from Brazil to Latin America, the Caribbean, and now South Florida, alarm has been raised in the media about the very real danger the virus poses to women who are pregnant or may become pregnant.
Travel companies in Miami, however, say that the effect so far on tourism has been minimal, due to a number of factors.
As of Wednesday, 43 confirmed cases of non-travel related Zika infections have been reported in Florida, according to the Florida Department of Health.
The fact that the Zika outbreak had initially been contained to a small area of Miami, the arts-focused Wynwood neighborhood, has been the key factor in the lack of an effect on tourism the state overall, sources said. But on Friday, five locally transmitted cases were confirmed in Miami Beach, an area with much heavier tourist traffic.
Those infections prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to warn pregnant women not to travel to the two areas of active transmission, and to caution anyone who has visited the areas to use protection or abstain from sex with a pregnant partner. The agency also suggested that pregnant women and partners who are concerned about the virus "may want to consider postponing nonessential travel to all parts of Miami-Dade County."
Reports of Zika cases in distant Pinellas County this week, located on Florida's Gulf Coast, and Palm Beach County north of Miami shows the complication of dealing with a mosquito-borne illness.
"As more people travel in and out of Wynwood, or travel to the general area, then we run the risk of seeing novel cases outside of those areas," said Katherine Harmon, director of health intelligence for risk management com
