The Gulf Coast Tourism Legacy of BP
Gulf Coast CVB and rental management companies take stock of post-BP oil spill tourism
By T. Wayne Waters, Condo Owner Magazine, Volume 18, Issue 4
Mention the date April 2010 to any tourism or hospitality professional in the Gulf Coast region and you can see their faces change – some subtly, others not so subtly. Perhaps they look downward and heave a sigh. Maybe they pull the corners of their mouths tight, or roll their eyes. Perhaps a slight grimace of disgust lines their face.
It was April 20, 2010 when an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig located about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana rocked the huge structure and killed 11 workers. Soon the Deepwater Horizon sank and oil started gushing out at the seabed. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil eventually polluted the Gulf of Mexico and washed ashore at states from Louisiana to Florida, killing sea animals and coastal tourism along the way, just before the region’s prime tourist season.
Things were different in 2011, however. BP (and other organizations and individuals), had begun cleaning up the mess as best it could, had initiated its “Voices from the Gulf” marketing campaign, and had begun to disperse funds to Gulf Coast locales where tourism had been so drastically impacted. Across the Gulf Coast, tourism records were set in 2011, continued to grow in 2012, and has generally been on an upward trajectory ever since.
Final 2014 numbers aren’t in yet but the average Florida Panhandle revenue per available room in 2013 was 27.1 percent greater than in 2009. The average revenue per available room in Alabama Gulf Coast counties in 2013 was 20.2 percent above 2009. Orange Beach Sales tax collections shot up 11 percent from August 2013 to August 2014 and lodging taxes jumped 9.5 percent. In Gulf Shores, sales tax collections rose five percent through the end of July, though lodging taxes fell about the same amount.
Overall, since the spill, BP has contributed more than $180 million to Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi to aid tourism in an attempt to ameliorate the effects of the ecological disaster. About $82 million was designated specifically for seafood marketing.
Real Estate Rentals Fall & Rise
Many Gulf Coast real estate firms experienced the same sort of tumultuous drop followed by big gains.“The BP funding was essential to get things back rolling again after the 2010 incident,” said Martin Owen, Regional Marketing and Sales Director, ResortQuest by Wyndham Vacation Rentals. “In 2011 there was pent-up demand which grew and continued to grow in 2012 and 2013. I think there was probably a greater awareness created by that, and I think CVBs made good use of the funding to expand their reach. It worked well. But I think other people who didn’t get funding, like us, have taken steps to get our marketing going and the Northern Gulf Coast is becoming a much more mature destination for tourism and attracting new tourists. There’s been heavy tourist traffic in Southern Alabama and Northwest Florida, for Texas and Louisiana, as well as other traditional markets. Obviously awareness has something to do with it. It’s paid off.”
Overall, Owen attributes a measure of the tourism success in the Gulf Coast region the past few years to BP funding but also a full measure to the efforts of tourism professionals. Owen said ResortQuest vacation rentals have been “great” this summer, “record-breaking.”
For Meyer Real Estate, the parent company of Meyer Vacation Rentals, occupancy in 2010 dropped 20 percent, followed in 2011 with a whopping 30 percent increase. The Gulf Shores-headquartered real estate firm manages 1,350 properties, including 1,200 condos, in Fort Morgan, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach in Alabama and Perdido Key in Florida.
“A lot of our regular guests didn’t come in 2010 or 2011,” said Missy Zak, vice president of Marketing & Communications for SH Enterprises, the umbrella company for the Meyer operations. “The new guests that came in 2011 had to be due to the BP advertising. We were forced to cut our advertising budget, including printing our annual vacation planner that we typically mailed to 500,000 people a year.”
Zak noted that occupancy rates continued to rise in 2012 before small drops the last couple of years, particularly as the BP funds dried up.
“In 2012, we saw more of a mix with the new guests and our repeat visitors feeling like it was okay to return. We saw an occupancy increase of the May–August season of 7 percent over the 2011 numbers. We dropped one percent in occupancy in 2013 and then another two percent in 2014. We have definitely felt the impact of the BP funds no longer being available. Their efforts really helped to brand the destination and reach markets that weren’t typically our targets or that we couldn’t afford to advertise in. Once people come to our beautiful beaches we know they will fall in love with our area and return again. About 85 percent of our guest base is repeat visitors.”
Destination Drop & Ascend
Gulf Coast CVBs generally have been able to use the BP funds to augment their own marketing efforts and to initiate new campaigns that are continuing to reap tourism benefits. Joanie Flynn, Vice President of Marketing for Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism, said that her area has had a good summer, even though most of her community’s BP funding was used up by 2012, the year she came into the marketing position at the CVB
“Both June and July were quite strong,” said Flynn. “It’s looking like August was equally strong. So, it looks like we’ll have a good, solid year with good increases in business. That’s really important this year because this is the year we really don’t have a lot of BP funding left over and also our big Southeastern Conference (SEC) corporate partnership ended in June. That was the last bit of that BP funding.”
The three-year partnership with the SEC was secured in 2011, thanks in no small part to BP funding.
“We’re really pleased with the results [from BP funding] but I think a lot of our continued success was grounded in some of the marketing decisions we made and that came into fruition this year,” said Flynn. “One key thing is that we developed a new marketing brand platform. We were researching it in 2012 and it was completed in 2013, so it’s now fully up and running. We have new ads, new collateral for everything that speaks to brand and tag lines.”
Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism also launched a new website this past January that is newly designed and has enhanced response capabilities for the myriad electronic devices used these days to secure information.
“It has significantly more content optimization and is more content-rich than our last site,” said Flynn. “I think the new website is instrumental in driving new customers to us.”
Flynn said that it is important that a condo owner understand that when a new customer, in the process of learning about the Gulf Shores-Orange Beach market, accesses the website, they are leaning that although there are plenty of hotels, the destination is much more about staying in a condo or a beach house.
Other recent initiatives Flynn noted include an annual marketing summit that provides educational opportunities for their own staff and for local businesses. She also said that the Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism board of directors just approved the launch of a special in-person “media university” for the organization’s industry partners that began late October. It is designed to help educate hospitality and tourism professionals in the area master marketing strategy and the use of social media and other online communication assets.
Ed Schroeder, Director, Emerald Coast CVB, said his area’s 2013-2014 success mirrors that of other Gulf Coast locales. “We’ve had a very strong year. We’re about nine percent over last year, so we’re enjoying the same good fortunes as the other coastal cities all the way from Gulf Shores to Panama City.
Schroeder, who took the helm as Director at the Emerald Coast CVB December of last year, said that 2013 was just “okay” and that Emerald Coast “did not do as well as our neighbors.” He wasn’t able to comment specifically about Emerald Coast numbers for 2011 and 2012 but acknowledged that the media attention and BP dollars heaped upon the Northwest Florida region during those years had an impact.
“There’s no question that knowledge of Northwest Florida was exponentially increased by these huge amounts of marketing and media focused on our area and brought folks to the area in 2011,” said Schroeder. “Then, the huge marketing dollars that were available in late 2010, 2011, 2012 certainly added to the message that we were in good shape and ready to embrace all these people who had now heard of us.
The last of the BP dollars used in Okaloosa County, according to Schroeder, were spent by March of this year for a far-reaching television advertising campaign that he indicated was very helpful coming into the summer season.
Panama City Beach PR Manager David Demarest is less certain than some others that BP funding or marketing had a particularly large influence on his area’s growth in tourism, despite the fact that tourist development tax collections for the important month of August jumped 34.5 percent in 2011.
“We were picking up pretty steadily each year from 2006 until the oil spill,” noted Demarest. “The Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport opened a couple of weeks before the oil spill and we were expecting a big spike in tourism from that. Instead, we started going down, in our case, largely due to the public perception even though we didn’t really have a problem with oil product on the beach.”
Whatever the cause, Panama City Beach’s tourism tax dollars have been rising post-spill.
“What we were able to do was show a lot of pictures of the beach and make every attempt we could to get the word out that the beach was still beautiful and still a good place to come,” said Demarest. “After that, we have been back on track.”
Panama City Beach’s August numbers, a key month of the important summer season, have been shooting upward ever since. According to a Panama City Beach (PCB) Tourist Development Tax Revenue Analysis, PCB saw a 15.4 percent increase for August 2012, a 21.5 percent increase for August 2013 and a nearly 23 percent increase for August 2014, a record-breaking number.
Overall, the area had seen a 7.6 percent increase year-to-date by the end of August 2014 and August lodging revenues are up 132 percent since the summer of the spill.
“We’ve had a lot of other irons in the fire paying off,” Demarest said.
Future So Bright Better Wear Shades
All these Gulf Coast tourism professionals are optimistic about the region’s future, though SH Enterprise’s Zak can’t help but leaven her optimism with a dash of wishful thinking. “While we appreciate the new visitors that were introduced to us through those messages,” said Zak, “we wish there was still that powerful of a branding campaign to influence a large number of new visitors to our area again.”
ResortQuest’s Owen believes the near-term future looks bright. “We’re having a good fall as well. We’re very happy with the way the shoulder season is behaving. There are strong bookings and visitors are coming. The efforts put in by the CVBs, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, VisitFlorida and other bigger players, like ResortQuest, is obviously attracting people here for festival season, so certainly there is an ongoing fall season for us. We’re also seeing good figures for future bookings for next year. The calls are coming in.”
Emerald Coast CVB’s Schroeder sees a bright future as well. “I’m very confident that tourism growth will continue in the Emerald Coast,” said Schroeder. “We have a well-funded and very well-constructed marketing strategy. We’re going to continue to grow at the rate we have been, I believe.”
Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism’s Flynn also sees continuing positive developments. “Our welcome center staff tells us that they’re spending much more time familiarizing new customers to the area and what it has to offer.”
.
The Gulf Coast Tourism Legacy of BP
Gulf Coast CVB and rental management companies take stock of post-BP oil spill tourism
By T. Wayne Waters
Mention the date April 2010 to any tourism or hospitality professional in the Gulf Coast region and you can see their faces change – some subtly, others not so subtly. Perhaps they look downward and heave a sigh. Maybe they pull the corners of their mouths tight, or roll their eyes. Perhaps a slight grimace of disgust lines their face.
It was April 20, 2010 when an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig located about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana rocked the huge structure and killed 11 workers. Soon the Deepwater Horizon sank and oil started gushing out at the seabed. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil eventually polluted the Gulf of Mexico and washed ashore at states from Louisiana to Florida, killing sea animals and coastal tourism along the way, just before the region’s prime tourist season.
Things were different in 2011, however. BP (and other organizations and individuals), had begun cleaning up the mess as best it could, had initiated its “Voices from the Gulf” marketing campaign, and had begun to disperse funds to Gulf Coast locales where tourism had been so drastically impacted. Across the Gulf Coast, tourism records were set in 2011, continued to grow in 2012, and has generally been on an upward trajectory ever since.
Final 2014 numbers aren’t in yet but the average Florida Panhandle revenue per available room in 2013 was 27.1 percent greater than in 2009. The average revenue per available room in Alabama Gulf Coast counties in 2013 was 20.2 percent above 2009. Orange Beach Sales tax collections shot up 11 percent from August 2013 to August 2014 and lodging taxes jumped 9.5 percent. In Gulf Shores, sales tax collections rose five percent through the end of July, though lodging taxes fell about the same amount.
Overall, since the spill, BP has contributed more than $180 million to Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi to aid tourism in an attempt to ameliorate the effects of the ecological disaster. About $82 million was designated specifically for seafood marketing.
Real Estate Rentals Fall & Rise
Many Gulf Coast real estate firms experienced the same sort of tumultuous drop followed by big gains.“The BP funding was essential to get things back rolling again after the 2010 incident,” said Martin Owen, Regional Marketing and Sales Director, ResortQuest by Wyndham Vacation Rentals. “In 2011 there was pent-up demand which grew and continued to grow in 2012 and 2013. I think there was probably a greater awareness created by that, and I think CVBs made good use of the funding to expand their reach. It worked well. But I think other people who didn’t get funding, like us, have taken steps to get our marketing going and the Northern Gulf Coast is becoming a much more mature destination for tourism and attracting new tourists. There’s been heavy tourist traffic in Southern Alabama and Northwest Florida, for Texas and Louisiana, as well as other traditional markets. Obviously awareness has something to do with it. It’s paid off.”
Overall, Owen attributes a measure of the tourism success in the Gulf Coast region the past few years to BP funding but also a full measure to the efforts of tourism professionals. Owen said ResortQuest vacation rentals have been “great” this summer, “record-breaking.”
For Meyer Real Estate, the parent company of Meyer Vacation Rentals, occupancy in 2010 dropped 20 percent, followed in 2011 with a whopping 30 percent increase. The Gulf Shores-headquartered real estate firm manages 1,350 properties, including 1,200 condos, in Fort Morgan, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach in Alabama and Perdido Key in Florida.
“A lot of our regular guests didn’t come in 2010 or 2011,” said Missy Zak, vice president of Marketing & Communications for SH Enterprises, the umbrella company for the Meyer operations. “The new guests that came in 2011 had to be due to the BP advertising. We were forced to cut our advertising budget, including printing our annual vacation planner that we typically mailed to 500,000 people a year.”
Zak noted that occupancy rates continued to rise in 2012 before small drops the last couple of years, particularly as the BP funds dried up.
“In 2012, we saw more of a mix with the new guests and our repeat visitors feeling like it was okay to return. We saw an occupancy increase of the May–August season of 7 percent over the 2011 numbers. We dropped one percent in occupancy in 2013 and then another two percent in 2014. We have definitely felt the impact of the BP funds no longer being available. Their efforts really helped to brand the destination and reach markets that weren’t typically our targets or that we couldn’t afford to advertise in. Once people come to our beautiful beaches we know they will fall in love with our area and return again. About 85 percent of our guest base is repeat visitors.”
Destination Drop & Ascend
Gulf Coast CVBs generally have been able to use the BP funds to augment their own marketing efforts and to initiate new campaigns that are continuing to reap tourism benefits. Joanie Flynn, Vice President of Marketing for Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism, said that her area has had a good summer, even though most of her community’s BP funding was used up by 2012, the year she came into the marketing position at the CVB
“Both June and July were quite strong,” said Flynn. “It’s looking like August was equally strong. So, it looks like we’ll have a good, solid year with good increases in business. That’s really important this year because this is the year we really don’t have a lot of BP funding left over and also our big Southeastern Conference (SEC) corporate partnership ended in June. That was the last bit of that BP funding.”
The three-year partnership with the SEC was secured in 2011, thanks in no small part to BP funding.
“We’re really pleased with the results [from BP funding] but I think a lot of our continued success was grounded in some of the marketing decisions we made and that came into fruition this year,” said Flynn. “One key thing is that we developed a new marketing brand platform. We were researching it in 2012 and it was completed in 2013, so it’s now fully up and running. We have new ads, new collateral for everything that speaks to brand and tag lines.”
Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism also launched a new website this past January that is newly designed and has enhanced response capabilities for the myriad electronic devices used these days to secure information.
“It has significantly more content optimization and is more content-rich than our last site,” said Flynn. “I think the new website is instrumental in driving new customers to us.”
Flynn said that it is important that a condo owner understand that when a new customer, in the process of learning about the Gulf Shores-Orange Beach market, accesses the website, they are leaning that although there are plenty of hotels, the destination is much more about staying in a condo or a beach house.
Other recent initiatives Flynn noted include an annual marketing summit that provides educational opportunities for their own staff and for local businesses. She also said that the Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism board of directors just approved the launch of a special in-person “media university” for the organization’s industry partners that began late October. It is designed to help educate hospitality and tourism professionals in the area master marketing strategy and the use of social media and other online communication assets.
Ed Schroeder, Director, Emerald Coast CVB, said his area’s 2013-2014 success mirrors that of other Gulf Coast locales. “We’ve had a very strong year. We’re about nine percent over last year, so we’re enjoying the same good fortunes as the other coastal cities all the way from Gulf Shores to Panama City.
Schroeder, who took the helm as Director at the Emerald Coast CVB December of last year, said that 2013 was just “okay” and that Emerald Coast “did not do as well as our neighbors.” He wasn’t able to comment specifically about Emerald Coast numbers for 2011 and 2012 but acknowledged that the media attention and BP dollars heaped upon the Northwest Florida region during those years had an impact.
“There’s no question that knowledge of Northwest Florida was exponentially increased by these huge amounts of marketing and media focused on our area and brought folks to the area in 2011,” said Schroeder. “Then, the huge marketing dollars that were available in late 2010, 2011, 2012 certainly added to the message that we were in good shape and ready to embrace all these people who had now heard of us.
The last of the BP dollars used in Okaloosa County, according to Schroeder, were spent by March of this year for a far-reaching television advertising campaign that he indicated was very helpful coming into the summer season.
Panama City Beach PR Manager David Demarest is less certain than some others that BP funding or marketing had a particularly large influence on his area’s growth in tourism, despite the fact that tourist development tax collections for the important month of August jumped 34.5 percent in 2011.
“We were picking up pretty steadily each year from 2006 until the oil spill,” noted Demarest. “The Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport opened a couple of weeks before the oil spill and we were expecting a big spike in tourism from that. Instead, we started going down, in our case, largely due to the public perception even though we didn’t really have a problem with oil product on the beach.”
Whatever the cause, Panama City Beach’s tourism tax dollars have been rising post-spill.
“What we were able to do was show a lot of pictures of the beach and make every attempt we could to get the word out that the beach was still beautiful and still a good place to come,” said Demarest. “After that, we have been back on track.”
Panama City Beach’s August numbers, a key month of the important summer season, have been shooting upward ever since. According to a Panama City Beach (PCB) Tourist Development Tax Revenue Analysis, PCB saw a 15.4 percent increase for August 2012, a 21.5 percent increase for August 2013 and a nearly 23 percent increase for August 2014, a record-breaking number.
Overall, the area had seen a 7.6 percent increase year-to-date by the end of August 2014 and August lodging revenues are up 132 percent since the summer of the spill.
“We’ve had a lot of other irons in the fire paying off,” Demarest said.
Future So Bright Better Wear Shades
All these Gulf Coast tourism professionals are optimistic about the region’s future, though SH Enterprise’s Zak can’t help but leaven her optimism with a dash of wishful thinking. “While we appreciate the new visitors that were introduced to us through those messages,” said Zak, “we wish there was still that powerful of a branding campaign to influence a large number of new visitors to our area again.”
ResortQuest’s Owen believes the near-term future looks bright. “We’re having a good fall as well. We’re very happy with the way the shoulder season is behaving. There are strong bookings and visitors are coming. The efforts put in by the CVBs, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, VisitFlorida and other bigger players, like ResortQuest, is obviously attracting people here for festival season, so certainly there is an ongoing fall season for us. We’re also seeing good figures for future bookings for next year. The calls are coming in.”
Emerald Coast CVB’s Schroeder sees a bright future as well. “I’m very confident that tourism growth will continue in the Emerald Coast,” said Schroeder. “We have a well-funded and very well-constructed marketing strategy. We’re going to continue to grow at the rate we have been, I believe.”
Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism’s Flynn also sees continuing positive developments. “Our welcome center staff tells us that they’re spending much more time familiarizing new customers to the area and what it has to offer.”