Jul. 17--Buoyed by a muscular leisure travel sector, Miami-Dade had the highest hotel occupancy rate out of the nation's 25 top travel markets for the first five months of 2001, according to lodging scorekeepers Smith Travel Research. 

The county's hotels were filled, on average, 75.6 percent during that period compared to the national average of 60.5 percent, the agency found. 

Softening demand in the nation's top tourist markets, triggered by a drop in business travel, helped push Miami-Dade to the front of the pack. 

"We always do well in the first quarter, that's unique in Miami," said Chase Burritt, a hospitality industry analyst with Ernst and Young. "What's interesting is that [this market] hasn't really been impacted for the first five months, whereas the other markets have been." 

Occupancy rates in New York fell to 74 percent, a 6.5 point drop from the first five months of 2000. Orlando fell to 71.6 percent against 76.5 percent from the year before. Worst hit was the San Francisco/San Mateo region, where hotel occupancy, dented by the dot coma, plummeted 10.3 points to 68.4 percent. 

Declining occupancy is widely attributed to cutbacks in corporate spending, particularly business travel. 

Miami-Dade remains a magnet for national and international leisure visitors, rendering it more insulated to squeezes in business travel than most destinations. 

"It's an issue of us holding our own, and the others falling back," said David Whitaker, senior vice president of marketing at the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors' Bureau. "It goes back to us not having all of our eggs in one basket." 

Miami-Dade's occupancy rates for January through May have orbited the 75th percentile for the past three years. Its hotels were filled 76.2 percent for those months in 2000 and 74.6 percent for 1999. The 1.4 percent drop from last year translates to an additional 616 vacant rooms. 

A solid turnout during Miami's peak season brought the numbers up -- the county's average occupancy for May was 65.2 percent, ahead of the national mean of just 2.2 points. 

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(c) 2001, The Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.