TV travel episode to shine spot on Strand

Myrtle Beach, prepare for your close-up.

Samantha Brown, a personality on the Travel Channel, will film an episode featuring the Grand Strand, a spokeswoman for the channel said.

Brown hosts a series that takes viewers on virtual vacations. This year's series, premiering this summer, will be called "Passport to Great Weekends," featuring her picks for quick getaway destinations. Past seasons have included "Passport to Latin America" and "Passport to Europe."

"It will be one of the biggest single pieces of publicity that we've received," said Brad Dean, president and chief executive of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.

The series will premiere June 26 at 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., though the date for the Myrtle Beach show has not yet been determined, Travel Channel spokeswoman Michae Holloman said.

Brown will film in Myrtle Beach in May, though not during the annual bike rallies that bring hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists to the Grand Strand, Dean said.

A videotaped message from Brown will be shown during a news conference Monday in North Myrtle Beach with a representative from the channel, he said.

The event will be at 1:30 p.m. at Prince Resort at the Cherry Grove Pier.

The Myrtle Beach chamber had great success with its previous advertising on the Travel Channel. Studies showed that around two-thirds of the viewers who responded to advertising on the channel ended up visiting - and half of those were people who had never been to the Myrtle Beach area before, Dean said.

In a deal that has been in the works for a year, the North Myrtle Beach and Myrtle Beach chambers of commerce scored the high-profile spot by agreeing to advertise on the Travel Channel, Dean said.

He would not say exactly how much the advertising would cost, but said it is more than $200,000.

In February, North Myrtle Beach City Council agreed to give its chamber $100,000 to help pay for the advertising.

"We just felt like it would be a golden opportunity to showcase our community to people all over the United States and in Canada," North Myrtle Beach Mayor Marilyn Hatley said. "This is really big for our community, because Samantha Brown, most of the time, is traveling all over the world and exotic places. I just think we're very fortunate to be on the same show as those places."

Dean said he thinks this is the first time the area as a whole has been featured on an entire show on any network.

Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday studied Samantha Brown's show when developing its reality show, "Road Trip: Myrtle Beach," which aired this spring on The Golf Channel, said Bill Golden, president of the golf marketing group.

"It's hard to tell so far how it has helped the local golf business," Golden said. Anecdotally, however, it seems to have been a success. "We can certainly see the effect of the awareness," he said.

The Myrtle Beach chamber is using money from a state grant program and matching private dollars to pay for the Travel Channel advertising. That grant program was cut out of the state budget this year, though Dean has not given up on getting some back in the budget.

"If we don't get the funding we're shooting for, we won't be able to get promotions like this," he said.

The "Great Weekends" series will also feature New Orleans; Las Vegas; New England; Montana; Cabo San Lucas; San Francisco; Orlando, Fla.; Austin, Texas; New York City; Hawaii; Paris; Washington, D.C.; and Tuscany, according to the Travel Channel.