Provide for Tampa tourism not maintaining with demand

Hotels see the burden as do ridesharing like Uber. In the end, it affects your wallet.

TAMPA, Florida – Tampa is beginning to bring tourism back to near-normal levels.

Major events have helped the city’s tourism industry recover.

“Hotel occupancy was well over 90 percent on WrestleMania Friday and Saturday nights,” said Santiago Corrada, CEO of Visit Tampa Bay.

After hotel occupancy fell to just 23.2 percent in April last year, the news is a welcome change. In fact, Tampa is well on its way to topping pre-pandemic levels.

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“We had a couple of weekends, some days that weren’t better than last year because that’s silly compared to a pandemic situation, but our 2019 record,” said Corrada.

However, with this return comes a need and a lack of staff.

“The demand exceeds the number of employees because, as you know, we lost many, many of our colleagues, a terrible situation during the pandemic, and some moved on to other things, so we haven’t really recaptured that workforce,” Corrada said .

The shortage also affected car rental services during the spring break as there were no cars available at all in some locations. Ridesharing companies like Uber are seeing similar bottlenecks.

“Now that demand has returned quickly, we need more drivers to meet that demand. Some of the problems we are seeing in the Tampa Bay market with increased waiting times and higher prices are due in part to the fact that drivers haven’t returned to levels we’ve seen in years past, “said Javi Correoso, a Uber representative in Florida.

According to Uber, trips in Tampa Bay cost on average 50 to 60 percent more than normal due to driver shortage. To remedy this, Uber is offering incentives to get more drivers onto the road with a “$ 250 million incentive”.

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On average, this means that Uber trips in Tampa are making an extra $ 5 an hour than they’re used to.

“Right now there is a lot of demand in the Florida markets, especially the Tampa Bay market, so we’re investing in these incentives to recruit new drivers and attract drivers who have not yet returned to the platform,” said Correoso.

Lyft, another ridesharing app that operates in our area, also offers drivers some incentives in unspecified amounts.

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