The Atlantic Ocean is right there. Literally steps away, across one of the most beloved stretches of beach in South Florida. Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort sits on the Broadwalk with AAA Four Diamond status, a LandShark bar, and a view that sells itself.
And still, parents tell Joanie Bowden the kids chose this resort because of the FlowRider.
Joanie is the Director of Recreation and Atmosphere at Margaritaville Hollywood Beach, and she’s heard it enough times that it doesn’t surprise her anymore. Families researching their vacation, kids lobbying hard, the wave machine tipping the decision.
Before a guest chooses a hotel, she’ll tell you, they want to know what’s available to them. The FlowRider is part of the answer that closes the booking.
The Live Billboard
The FlowRider at Margaritaville sits in direct eyeline of the Hollywood Broadwalk, one of the most trafficked stretches of beachfront in the state. It doesn’t need a marketing budget. It markets itself.
People stop to watch. They get curious. They come in off the Broadwalk and buy a session. The resort draws both hotel guests and walk-up visitors from the public, two audiences that coexist naturally around the wave without any meaningful friction between them. The FlowRider doesn’t care if you’re in room 412 or just passing through. It pulls people in either way.
What keeps them coming back is the staff. Reviews at Margaritaville consistently lead not with the ride itself but with the flow guards, their patience, the time they take with first-timers, the way they show up for guests who are nervous or unsure. The ride is a given, Joanie says. What guests write about is the people running it.
That relationship between staff and guest occasionally produces moments worth remembering. One of Margaritaville’s flow guards once found a guest’s wedding ring at the bottom of the tank. Joanie describes it as finding a needle in a haystack. The guest was over the moon. It’s the kind of story that doesn’t happen at a pool.
A Destination Within a Destination
On a strong day, the FlowRider at Margaritaville runs just over 100 riders and generates around $4,000 in direct session revenue. In 2025, the attraction brought in nearly $60,000 more than the year before. Weather plays a role, summer storms and an unheated tank in winter both affect volume, but the general trajectory is up.
The revenue model has been built deliberately. Local specials were designed to fill low-occupancy periods, bringing in community riders when hotel business is softer. Private lessons and full buyouts are a growing piece of the picture, one Joanie identifies as an area with room to run. And a new partnership with Real Time reservations now lets future hotel guests book the FlowRider in advance, turning a same-day walk-up into a pre-arrival commitment that shows up in the booking before the guest even arrives on property.
The placement helps all of it. The FlowRider sits adjacent to LandShark, Margaritaville’s waterfront restaurant, and Joanie is confident the proximity drives food and beverage spend in both directions. Spectators settle in. Riders grab lunch before or after. The wave creates dwell time that the pool alone doesn’t.
Joanie puts the operator case simply:
The FlowRider has become much more than an attraction. It is a signature experience that helps define the resort. It creates and delivers fun and escapism, which is one of the brand’s core values, and it has become a destination within the destination.
Jimmy Buffett was a surfer, a storyteller, and one of the most genuinely beloved figures to ever call the beach home. The brand he built was always about that feeling: sun-soaked, a little wild, open to everyone. A wave machine on the Hollywood Broadwalk fits that ethos better than almost anything else could.
