Today hotels and motels are found throughout Florida. Early in this century hotels were concentrated in a few places, particularly along the Atlantic coast and the Tampa Bay region, that had railroad connections with the rest of the nation. With the building of roads, hotel and motel accommodations became more widely distributed. Since 1971, with the opening of Walt Disney World and other theme parks nearby, as well as the construction of the interstate highway system, the distribution of hotels and motels is once again more uneven. The Orlando area vies with Las Vegas, Nevada, as the metropolitan area with the most hotel and motel rooms. Considerable hotel and motel construction has also occurred in southwestern Florida, especially in Naples and on Marco Island.
For Florida as a whole, occupancyÊrates vary by the season. In the winter they are highest, and each season thereafter they fall. First quarter occupancy rates during the 1980s have varied greatly. In 1984 and 1985 they were especially low, in part due to cold weather on the southern peninsula, but also because of national business conditions.
