By Karen Schwartz

New York Times

MIAMI >> After enduring the years of ups and downs that came with being a part of Wynwood’s transformation from a struggling warehouse district into Miami’s hot new neighborhood, restaurateur Ivette Naranjo thought the worst was behind her.

Her Cafeina Wynwood Lounge hosted large events for HBO, Absolut and Audi, where as many as 600 hipsters could drink and dance to a disc jockey spinning vinyl in the garden. On weekends, an even mix of locals and tourists sipped cocktails with names like Hot Passion and critiqued the art in the adjacent gallery.

Then came Zika.

After Friday’s announcement that mosquitoes carrying the virus had been found in a square mile of Wynwood, this past Saturday was her worst night ever.

“Usually we have from 250 to 350 people a night in the summer, and we had about 40 people come in,” Naranjo said.

The news grew worse Monday, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the first Zika travel advisory in the United States, cautioning pregnant women to avoid Wynwood.

Although the warning comes in August, traditionally a slow season for tourism in Miami, it does coincide with the time that many travelers are looking to make their plans for winter vacations. It has left hoteliers and others in the travel industry nervous that the warning will dampen Florida’s $82 billion tourism industry.

Hotel chains declined to release figures for the week. Travel agents said that they had received many inquiries but that only a few people had changed plans.

Monday’s initial rush of 30 canceled reservations with Ovation Vacations in New York, decreased to eight Tuesday and none Wednesday, said its president, Jack Ezon.

Most were families or young couples, he said, echoing the experience of Kristen Korey Pike, the founder of KK Travels Worldwide in Atlanta, who said the handful of cancellations her agency received mostly came from pregnant women and young couples.

If travelers’ reactions to the virus in Florida mirrors their attitude to the much larger outbreak of Zika in the Caribbean, the immediate effect may be pronounced, followed by a slight rebound in interest among prospective visitors. Business travel, however, may decline.

When the Zika virus began spreading throughout the Caribbean in January, the CDC warned pregnant women and those planning to become pregnant against traveling to affected areas, including destinations like Puerto Rico and Barbados, as well as Mexico, Brazil and Panama. The effect was almost immediate. Many airlines, cruise lines and hotels implemented refund policies for travelers who wanted to change their plans.

Throughout the year, the number of people searching for flights to Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Barbados and Jamaica would drop after each new report from the CDC but would eventually bounce back. By early July, searches for those destinations were at their highest level for the year, said Spencer MacDonald, a spokesman for the internet travel site lilgo.com.

Still, looking is not the same as buying, and an 11 percent increase in hotel bookings in Puerto Rico in January was followed by declines of 3 percent in February, 5 percent in March and 4 percent in April, the most recent month for figures, according to Ingrid I. Rivera-Rocafort, the executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Co.

Hotels in the Caribbean took a hit in the first four months of 2016 — partly because of the Zika virus, according to the consulting and analytics division at STR, a data company specializing in hotels. Occupancy decreased 3 percent to 72.9 percent compared with the same period in 2015.

Looking ahead, Rivera-Rocafort of the Puerto Rico agency said that 41,000 room nights had been canceled over the next two years, for a loss of $28 million.

Not included in those figures is a conference for 600 people by the American Lighting Association, which in June called off its annual conference, scheduled for the El Conquistador in Puerto Rico in September.

“Bottom line: We didn’t want to put any one person at risk,” said Eric Jacobson, the president of the trade group. Its 2017 conference is in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Other warm-weather destinations are also likely to host fewer conferences in coming years.

The Bahamas had 23 medical conferences scheduled for 2016 and has only eight thus far for next year. Costa Rica had 29 this year and has 10 for next year, the Dominican Republic had five for this year and none for next, and Florida has 1,404 for this year, and only 455 scheduled so far for next, according to figures provided by Priya Korrapti, founder of eMedEvents, which lists more than 50,000 medical conferences worldwide on its website.

Even though events can be added, most are announced at least six months in advance.

“We do see a reduction in the number of conferences being announced in places affected by Zika for the year 2017,” Korrapti said from her office in Colorado.

Among leisure travelers, some trips are being postponed until couples are done having children.

Aiyana Spahr, 33, and her husband, Erik, canceled their planned getaway from the cold of Hollis, New Hampshire, to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands in February after learning she was pregnant with their second, and final, child.

“We thought about traveling to different places when we canceled our St. John trip, but I didn’t even want to risk going to Florida, so we just decided to put it off,” she said. “The baby is due at the end of the month, so we are hoping to basically do the trip to St. John some time in December or February.”

© 2016 The New York Times Company