Meeting planners looking at Miami and Miami Beach for large-scale events will soon have a new headquarters hotel to work with. Greater Miami and Miami Beach recently celebrated the topping off of the 800-room Grand Hyatt Miami Beach, which will connect directly to the Miami Beach Convention Center. Scheduled to open in late 2027, the project is expected to strengthen the destination’s ability to accommodate larger conventions.
Prevue attended the ceremony at the Grand Hyatt Miami Beach construction site, where city leaders and executives from South Florida real estate developers Terra and Turnberry, along with Hyatt, addressed attendees, including the construction crews working on the project.
“Reaching this milestone marks another defining moment in bringing Grand Hyatt Miami Beach to life,” said David Whitaker, President and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. “This project represents a critical piece of our convention ecosystem, and its continued progress reinforces Greater Miami and Miami Beach’s position as a premier destination for world-class meetings, conventions and events. The addition of a hotel of this size and its connection to the convention center has opened the door for literally dozens of major conventions and trade shows that have never convened here to now show an interest and a desire. That in itself is transformative.”
Located at 17th Street and Convention Center Drive, the 17-story Grand Hyatt Miami Beach will provide access to the newly renovated Miami Beach Convention Center [MBCC] via a skybridge. The hotel will feature 12 floors of guest rooms, including 50 suites with views of Miami Beach, and four floors of meeting and ballroom space designed to complement the Convention Center’s programming. The 110,000 sf of meeting space will also include an 8,000-sf Grand Lawn located on the fifth-floor rooftop amenity deck with views of the Miami skyline.
During the ceremony, Prevue spoke with Carol Motley, Sr. VP of Convention Sales and Services for the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, about the impact the project is expected to have on meeting planners and the destination’s convention business.
“The [MBCC] with the $640 million re-imagination that it went through was already a gamechanger for us, and it allowed us to go after that very high-level, high-quality client. The one piece that we were missing as a destination—although we were still selling this convention center without the headquarters hotel—and that every other destination had, was a headquarters hotel that is attached to the convention center.”
Motley said the addition changes the conversation with prospective clients. “As we go out to prospect for new business, we’re able to tell a complete story. Not only do we have a convention center that is more than perfect and adequate to hold your meetings, but we have a brand-new Grand Hyatt hotel—a well-known name—attached with enough rooms to be your headquarters hotel.”
Motley also spoke about the hotel’s impact on the community, noting, “We’re an economic impact driver, right? So now, we’re able to get more business [to the destination]—high-quality, high-value business that has never even thought about Miami Beach, because we didn’t have this infrastructure. And that means less traffic [as well] because you’re going to have everyone walking over from the hotel, meaning less transportation buses, less cars coming through. So, the residents are able to have their community and their sense of community that they’re used to, all while there’s a major convention going on here.”
When can meeting planners start booking events that include room blocks at the Grand Hyatt Miami Beach? Motley says that although the opening date is set for November 2027, she likes to give herself a buffer, meaning “I’m technically looking at March 2028 and beyond.”
For Motley, the Grand Hyatt Miami Beach represents more than the final piece of the Miami Beach Convention Center campus. It’s an investment in the destination’s long-term competitiveness. As she put it, the project is “laying the groundwork for continued future success.”
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