TRAVEL INSIDER : Miami Tourism Trying to Weather Hurricane : Recovery: Most tourist attractions in the city, including beaches, escaped substantial damage. Now the challenge is to persuade potential visitors.

Despite the devastation wrought by Hurricane Andrew when it struck south of Miami four weeks ago, the tourism industry of the greater Miami area has bounced back quickly and tourists are actively being courted.

While it may take weeks to assess the damage done Sept. 11 by Hurricane Iniki on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, the picture in South Florida is clearer. On Miami Beach, the neon lights are glittering again in the historic Art Deco District, which has become one of the nation’s hottest getaway destinations. The district’s trendy little oceanfront hotels have reopened, the sidewalk cafes are back in business and the fashionable beach crowd is returning.

Fortunately, most of the greater Miami area’s tourist attractions, including all but a small portion of its beaches, escaped any substantial damage from the Aug. 24 hurricane, and repairs where needed were launched immediately. Last week, 110 of the 116 hotels belonging to the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau were open for guests.

Outlying destinations, such as Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach to the north and the Florida Keys to the south, suffered minimal damage. The city of Naples, on Florida’s west coast, is also in good shape. By the time Andrew crossed the Florida peninsula, its ferocious winds had weakened and little damage occurred.

In many areas, the only signs of damage that a visitor might spot are palms stripped of fronds or bare tree branches.

But a few greater Miami attractions, including the popular Metrozoo, took far more severe blows and remain closed. The zoo, which lost its Wings of Asia tropical bird aviary, is not expected to reopen for six months or perhaps even longer. Everglades and Biscayne national parks, which stood in the hurricane’s path, are shut down indefinitely.

On Key Biscayne, a lush flatland island linked by bridge to Miami, some hotels had water damage. The eight-story Sonesta Beach Hotel does not expect to reopen until Dec. 15. At Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Recreation Area, a popular beach destination, many of the trees are down, and the beach and other facilities are expected to be closed for several months.

Among other Miami-area attractions receiving significant damage:

- The Seaquarium, a 50-acre tropical marine garden, suffered uprooted trees and damage to its canopies and other structures. It hopes to reopen by Thanksgiving.

- Parrot Jungle and Gardens, a tropical jungle that is home to 1,200 exotic birds, was temporarily closed but has reopened. Andrew caused about $1.5 million damage to the gardens, but all the parrots and other animals, as well as many rare plant species, survived.

- Fairchild Tropical Gardens, a lakeside botanical research center, was littered with the fallen branches of trees and plants that made it one of America’s most spectacular tropical gardens. A massive cleanup was undertaken, and the gardens are expected to reopen Oct. 3.

Ironically, in some parts of the city near the hurricane’s path, hotels are full or nearly full, and reservations may be hard to get for a while.

Some storm victims who lost their homes have moved into temporary hotel lodgings, and other rooms are occupied by relief workers, utility-repair staffs and insurance adjusters working on hurricane recovery. According to the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, hotel occupancy in greater Miami is currently running about 95%.

As the south Miami area begins its long, slow recovery from Andrew, tourism officials in Miami and the state capital of Tallahassee have launched a worldwide promotional campaign to persuade visitors that Florida and Miami are ready to welcome them.

Tourism is of major importance to the local economy. If tourists don’t come, says Merrett R. Stierheim, president of the Convention & Visitors Bureau, Andrew will have “scored a second hit” on Miami by depriving it of income.

Last year, more than 8 million tourists visited the greater Miami area, and they pumped an estimated $7.2 billion into the local economy, according to Stierheim. About one-third of the area’s work force is directly or indirectly involved in the tourism industry. If tourists stay away, hotel employees, waiters and waitresses and others could lose their jobs.

“It’s a delicate message we’re delivering,” says Stierheim. “We must always keep our focus on the needy and the homeless. On the other hand, it would be a tragedy if potential visitors think they can’t come here in comfort and safety (as) they could before Andrew.”

He sees no conflict in out-of- towners enjoying themselves in the sun while thousands of Dade County residents try to rebuild their shattered lives. “Exactly the opposite is true,” he says. “People who come to Miami would be helping people by preserving their jobs, by preserving the economy, which is in jeopardy.”

He and other Miami officials appeared on national television recently to spread the word, and they will soon travel abroad to do the same. And even while Andrew still raged across the tip of Florida, the state’s tourism division kept its numerous foreign-based tourism offices updated frequently on developments. The state maintains offices in Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America. About 55% of greater Miami’s visitors come from outside the United States.

City and state officials say that one of their big problems is overcoming the public’s geographical misconception. Apparently, some prospective visitors have phoned tourism offices thinking much of the state and the entire city of Miami are shut down, which is not true at all. As an example of the problem, when Andrew was still just an off-coast threat, one British newspaper reportedly ran a headline that read, “Hurricane Bearing Down on Disney Beaches.”

“A lot of people don’t realize that the distance between Homestead (where Andrew hit) and Orlando (home of Disney World) is 230 miles,” says Gary Stogner, spokesman for Florida’s tourism division. “Florida is a pretty big state. It has more than 1,000 miles of beaches, and Andrew had an impact on less than 10 miles of them.”

Miami is battling the same sort of misconception. Most of the news reports from the devastated area carry the Miami dateline. But Dade County, in which Miami is located, is larger than the state of Rhode Island, Stierheim points out. Andrew struck in southern Dade County in the suburban communities of Homestead and Florida City, which are south of Miami’s downtown district and Miami Beach.

In the greater Miami area, Hurricane Andrew did “minimal damage,” says the Convention & Visitors Bureau. Visitor facilities and attractions are open in Miami Beach’s Art Deco District; downtown Miami; the communities of Coconut Grove and Coral Gables, which are south of the city, and Bal Harbour, Sunny Isles and Surfside to the north.

Erosion of the beaches, if any, was minimal. Electric power and lights have been restored to visitor areas except in south Dade County.

Traffic is moving well in tourist areas, but visitors are being discouraged from going into the devastated areas of south Dade County, where local roads are congested because of clearing and reconstruction work. An 11 p.m. curfew in south Dade County does not affect tourist areas.

Key Largo and the southern keys escaped most of Andrew’s wrath. “There’s no damage here regardless of what you may have heard,” claimed Ginna Thomas, executive director of the Key Largo Chamber of Commerce, in a recent telephone interview. “We are fine and open for business.”

For the time being, however, land-based facilities at popular John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo are closed while park staff assist in cleanup operations in Dade County.

Ft. Lauderdale was “spared the brunt” of the hurricane, says Francine Masonof the Greater Ft. Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We were back in business after a day. If you hadn’t been here before, you wouldn’t know there was a problem.”

However, some trees were toppled or were stripped of branches or fronds. The streets have been cleaned. Sand from some beach areas was blown inland, uncovering coral rocks, but otherwise the beaches are in good shape.

For up-to-date information on the Miami area, call the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, (800) 283-2707. For the rest of Florida, call the Florida Division of Tourism, (904) 487-1462.