A Myrtle Beach tourism season outlook amid COVID-19: ‘It’s far from an ordinary summer.’
The Grand Strand is in need of an economic boost after the local economy was nearly shut down by government-mandated closures and restrictions that began in March and were aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus.
The nation has been in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic for the past three months that shows no signs of diminishing. Somehow, the Myrtle Beach market hopes to achieve some semblance of a normal summer tourism season through the strife the country is enduring.
“I think overall we’re cautiously optimistic about summer travel,” said Karen Riordan, president and CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention & Visitors Bureau. “I don’t think it will be normal. It will definitely be different.”
Area businesses have nearly fully reopened for the summer season, including all but a few attractions and amusements.
“We’re hoping for a big turnaround to have a good summer after all the negativity we’ve had to deal with,” said SkyWheel Myrtle Beach partner and National Amusement Rides owner Bill Prescott, whose three amusement facilities are off Ocean Boulevard and in the Broadway at the Beach entertainment complex. “I’m positive. I think the summer is going to be good. Hopefully with our attractions and restaurants and bars open people will come.”
The recovery
Area hotels and other accommodations were closed for more than a month before reopening in early May, and they’re now on the rebound.
“We’ve gone from 100 to zero, now we’re up to 200. I guess we’re making up for lost time,” said Roy Clyburn, owner of the Condo-World/Condolux by Condo-World condo rental company, online travel agency and booking call center based in North Myrtle Beach. “We’re doing about three times [the bookings] this time of year compared to what we did the same time last year, but much of the inventory would have already been reserved.
“It has been a complete turnaround in a two- or three-week period.”
Room reservations aren’t at typical summer percentages yet, but they’re getting closer and improve as the summer progresses.
Matthew Brittain, president of Brittain Resorts & Hotels, which operates 10 Strand oceanfront hotels/condotels, said June revenue at his properties looks to be about 50 to 60 percent of what it was last June.
“That is assuming we pace like we are now, and we are booking at a faster pace now finally than we did last year, so there’s a good chance that could improve,” Brittain said. “It’s not going to be a great July, but if we continue to pace at the rate we’re going it will just be an off July obviously due to the virus, but not a terrible one. Nothing like June.”
Projected August occupancy rates are on pace to actually match those of August 2019, Brittain said, and that would be impressive because Labor Day weekend will be entirely in September this year, so August won’t have that three-day weekend boon that it had in part last year.
“August looks like we will make last year anyway, or something around last year,” Brittain said.
The final three weekends in May were strong once the hotels reopened without booking restrictions, with sold out weekend nights at many hotels the weekends of May 15-17 and 22-25 (Memorial Day weekend).
The hotels filled up on short notice as well, often in the few days approaching the weekends, so that gives accommodations providers hope their rooms will similarly fill up in June. “We are hoping,” Brittain said.
According to statistics provided by the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism, Myrtle Beach area hotel occupancy rates were below 30 percent on the weekdays May 11-14 and at or below 40 percent for the weekdays May 18-21. But they exploded to 84 and 88 percent on the Saturdays of May 16 and 23, the latter accounting for an increase of about 1 percent compared to the same weekend in 2019.
The SCPRT’s statistics are based on a weekly report it receives from STR (Smith Travel Research) Inc., a Tennessee-based company that tracks supply and demand data for industries including hotels. The numbers do not include short-term rentals by companies such as Airbnb and VRBO.
The mid- to late-May occupancy rates exceeded national forecasts, according to Riordan, and it’s believed they were boosted by the area being one of the few beach towns along the East Coast to be open after coronavirus closures.
Most traditional competing locations will now be open, as well, so they may pull from Myrtle Beach’s numbers this summer.
The accommodations industry has dropped pricing – although only slightly – from traditional summer highs in many cases to fill rooms, and the vacancies are decreasing.
“We’ve had to reduce our prices more so than we’d like, but we’ve got a lot of units sitting there empty that are now filling up,” Clyburn said. “Rates are down because we’re getting a late start. You have to have some incentive for them to buy.”
Area hoteliers would likely accept similar numbers to the depth of the last economic downturn and major disruption of the summer tourism season, the Great Recession from 2007-09.
Comparing the months of June, July and August in 2008 and 2019, hotel room nights in the Myrtle Beach area — essentially Horry County — were down 200,000 to 2 million and occupancy rates were down 8 percent to 74 percent, according to SCPRT.
The biggest drop for hotels came in the fall of 2008, and room nights for that year were down 1 million to 5.3 million compared to 2019. Occupancy was down 9 percent to 51 percent.
Condo-World’s check-in procedure is a reminder that we’re not in normal times. The company has an area set up outside its North Myrtle Beach office to limit indoor interaction with renters because of the coronavirus, and is disinfecting units and placing hand sanitizer in each one as part of its safety and sanitary procedures.
After being open for all of May, hotels now have their safety and cleaning protocols established for the busy season.
“We’re seeing [travelers] are feeling more comfortable than they were a month ago about staying in hotels, and they are interested in understanding what the safety and sanitation procedures are that those hotels are going to provide to keep their families safe, so that’s going to be a big emphasis for us and for the individual businesses,” Riordan said.
Golf still sluggish
The Myrtle Beach golf industry lost a large percentage of its revenue from its premier period – the spring golf season – because of COVID-19, and the market has been slow to recover in terms of visitor rounds.
According to Myrtle Beach Area Golf Course Owners Association executive director Tracy Conner, package rounds that combine golf with accommodations – which are the primary indicator of visitor play – are down nearly 50 percent for the month of June before returning to normal in July, when there are 13,000 package rounds booked.
“May certainly was difficult but it improved each day throughout the month, so at the end of the month we were closer to more traditional numbers,” Conner said, “and if that trend holds I’m hopeful by the middle of June we will have returned to more normal players and revenue numbers we would traditionally have.”
Visitor rounds are difficult to quantify in the summer because many vacationers book after they arrive, and rounds booked directly with golf courses aren’t tracked as visitor rounds.
The golf market is showing signs of a long-term recovery.
“As of June 1, the next 12 months running through May of 2021, we have 10 percent more package rounds booked than this time last year,” Conner said. “A lot of that has to do with rounds from this previous spring either getting re-booked for the fall or getting them re-booked for the following spring.”
Attracting tourists
With flight travel at a near stand-still, Myrtle Beach may have an advantage over many other tourist destinations by being largely a drive market.
Riordan said that generally includes areas within 350 miles of Myrtle Beach, which stretches to Atlanta and parts of Tennessee and West Virginia. Those are the areas the chamber and CVB will focus their marketing efforts on this summer, along with Ohio just outside the 350-mile radius.
“All the indicators are the places where people feel safe is in their home and in their car. We’re a classic car market, always have been,” Riordan said. “We’re also seeing in that travel intelligence that the places people want to go is outdoors, and they specifically mention beaches and parks.
“We’re starting to really emphasize in our marketing that we have 60 miles of coastline for people to enjoy, and we want people to spread out when they’re at the beach and go to maybe an area of the beach they have not gone to before.”
Riordan said people have also indicated they feel safer in campers, so the numerous camper and RV parks on the Strand are expected to be popular.
Riordan expects the summer traffic to be predominantly leisure travel featuring families and friends, and largely void of some of the traditional big groups. The Myrtle Beach Convention Center is open for business but because of cancellations the next scheduled event is the Showstoppers National Dance Competition from June 29-July 5. The Myrtle Beach Sports Center is also open and the next event there is the National Travel Basketball Association Girls National Championship from June 24-28.
“We’re really hoping that a lot of sports and group business and convention business will be back by the fall, by September, October and November,” Riordan said. “So far it has been pretty promising in that a lot of those sports groups in particular that had to cancel in the spring due to the coronavirus are very interested in re-booking for the fall.”
The chamber uses several data resources to maximize marketing efforts and effectively prepare for the season. It receives travel intelligence data from and is a member of the U.S. Travel Association based in Washington, D.C., which is essentially a think tank for all travel and uses information and forecasts from Oxford Economics.
Tourism Economics is a subdivision of Oxford, and Riordan said it is working with SCPRT on a new COVID-19 forecast for June-September to determine where the impacts and opportunities will be.
The chamber also utilizes research and travel intelligence from MMGY Global, a tourism branding company that won a chamber consultancy bid last year, and receives STR Inc. data through SCPRT.
Labor concerns
The hospitality industry will likely be short of help this summer, even if it is slower than usual.
The normal influx of approximately 3,000 foreign student workers through the J-1 visa program has been thus far blocked by the coronavirus’ impact around the globe, and further delays will leave businesses shorthanded.
Brittain Resorts managed to secure a flight carrying about 150 seasonal adult workers from Jamaica with H-2B work visas that had already been processed prior to the proliferation of the virus. H-2B workers are also part of the annual summer workforce in the area, and many of them will likely also be delayed or prevented from coming.
“We hope to get some more. Getting the flights out of these countries is the problem,” Brittain said.
“[Labor] is going to be difficult for sure,” Brittain continued. “Now it’s hard to predict how much the unemployment that has been affected from other areas is going to help that. But we’re struggling for labor for sure. There is definitely a labor shortage in some of the areas that we need them.”
The federal government’s emergency $600 enhancement to weekly unemployment checks for coronavirus relief continues through the end of July and has further stressed the workforce. It has been a deterrent to some employees wanting to return to work.
Brittain doesn’t anticipate the labor shortage to shut down businesses, but it might impact their operational efficiency and result in businesses having to offer higher wages to attract employees.
“The more [wages] go up the more people will enter that market,” Brittain said. “A lot of people fear that. My company looks at it a little differently. We think the quality of the person may very well go up, too. They may be more interested in the work. Pay people more and you tend to get better work is our experience.”
The new normal
Social distancing guidelines will still create challenges for businesses and tourists, including long waits to get into restaurants that are currently limited to 50 percent capacity.
Over the final three weekends in May, restaurants regularly had wait times to be seated, some reaching three hours.
Another widespread coronavirus outbreak could derail much of what has already been built up for the summer.
“It’s far from an ordinary summer, but Condo-World and I’m sure many others too will survive and do well in spite of what we’ve had to be subjected to,” Clyburn said.
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 11:36 AM.
