MIA held above 55 million passengers for a second straight year, PortMiami broke its cruise record and then sailed past ten million, and South Beach is mid-renaissance — two Art Deco landmarks reborn at $100 million apiece, with Aman and Bvlgari on the horizon.
Miami spent a century as the place America changed planes for somewhere warmer. Then finance and tech moved in, prices tripled in fifteen years — UBS counts incomes up just 25% in the same span — and the gateway became the destination. The 2026 scorecard reads like a coronation held in a cautionary tale: record cruise counts, a $32.2 billion visitor economy, and a housing market whose 1.41 bubble score UBS calls elevated.
Come between November and April. Sleep on the Beach if the point is the scene — the Shelborne and the Delano just reopened the two most storied Art Deco addresses — or on Key Biscayne if the point is to disappear. Fly into MIA, ride the free Metromover downtown, and leave one morning for the ships: PortMiami at sail-away is the cheapest spectacle in American travel.
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