With July Fourth upon us, the beach is beckoning this year - good news for North Carolina's coastal tourism industry.
AAA Carolinas predicts a 12 percent increase over last year in Fourth of July holiday travel. And along the coast, businesses say they're seeing more tourists than in the past two years.
"Gas prices are stable compared to last year," said David Parsons, AAA president. "A lot of people chose not to take an extended July Fourth vacation last year and this year are showing increased economic optimism."
Returning customers are cause for celebration at spots like Johnnie Mercer's Pier at Wrightsville Beach. "It's wall-to-wall just about all day long," counter clerk Bob Wilson said.
It's too early to tell whether the trend will carry through the summer - school has been out only for a couple of weeks. But Caroline Meeks, who runs Victory Beach Vacations in Carolina Beach, said her rentals recently jumped again after a strong early spring, then a lull in May.
"If I look at the numbers for the whole year, we are up," Meeks said. "Unfortunately, some of our reservations are from the Gulf Coast. People are saying they had to cancel their reservations there and make new ones."
Like it did last summer, the company is still getting a lot of last-minute reservations, Meeks said. Customers ask for shorter rentals.
"We've adjusted," she said, by cutting required lengths of stay and staffing the office until 9 p.m. "If the mom says, 'OK, we can go. Let's see if we can find a place,' and they want to go tomorrow morning and it's 8 o'clock on Thursday, you want to have somebody there to answer the phone."
This year, Meeks and other rental agents say, owners have not had to cut rates to entice customers, as they did in the summers of 2009 and 2008.
"We haven't had to discount because we've been so busy," she said.
Rentals up
Jim Foster of Foster Rentals & Realty in Atlantic Beach estimates his business is up at least 15 percent over last year. He rents condominiums to a customer base that includes people from Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. This year, he said, he's had one client from Alabama.
"I think that was a direct result of the oil spill," Foster said. "They lived down there and wanted to come here instead. They said it was the first time they had been on our coast."
Claire Aubel, spokeswoman for the N.C. Maritime Museums, said the museums at Southport and Hatteras have seen more visitors compared to the first three weeks of June 2009. Only the museum in Beaufort, traditionally the busiest of the three, is off a bit from last year.
Business is pretty good on the full- and half-day charter fishing trips that Bobby Smith runs at Fish-N-Fool Sportfishing Charters, based at the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center.
"It's different than the last two years," said Smith, who has run charters for a quarter-century. This year, he said, he's had customers from Florida and other Gulf Coast states in addition to his regular crowd.
"It looks like it's going to be a better year."
