Used to be, people pictured Fort Lauderdale hotels and envisioned a dozen college students sleeping on the floor during spring break.
No more. As redevelopment of Fort Lauderdale beach continues, the city and its neighbors now offer hotels for a wide variety of visitors.
For example, Fort Lauderdale will soon get a true luxury hotel. If all goes as planned, the $140 million St. Regis Fort Lauderdale Hotel and Residences will open in June 2006, planting a flag in the sand for luxury travel. The 169-room St. Regis will be Fort Lauderdale's first true luxury hotel. It expects to charge between $650 and $800 a night in the 2006 winter season, a spokeswoman said.
Another high-end recent arrival was the 996-room Westin Diplomat, which opened in Hollywood in 2002.
Last year two new properties opened. The Atlantic, a 124-unit condo/hotel run by a unit of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, replaced the much smaller Horizon Hotel, while the 156-unit Best Western Pelican Beach Resort was redeveloped by the Kruze family from a 109-room complex that was outmoded.
Another trend has been the growth of smaller boutique hotels, some of which cater to a growing influx of gay visitors. A recent Washington Post article cites two dozen gay hotels and guest houses.
The Post list included some traditional hotels as gay friendly, including the Sheraton Yankee Trader, a 501 room hotel built in 1956.
Here is a list of the largest hotels in Fort Lauderdale: