Resort business doing well at mid-season
By Don Klein

By most accounts the vacation business in Ocean City at mid-season is not just holding its own, but in many cases is showing strong signs of maintaining the level of last year's record breaking summer.

For example, room taxes, which are an easy way to measure Ocean City vacation business, reported a 5.5 percent increase in June, the most recent figures available. July and August are expected to also be healthy.

But Donna Abbott, the town's public relations director, said that it will be hard to beat last year's records. "Last year's figures were good and this year so far is holding steady."

Michael James, managing partner at the Carousel Resort, the hotel-condominium complex at 120th Street and Coastal Highway, describes this as "a very good summer."

He added, "we had an exceptionally strong volume in June, and July was at least as good as last year when we broke records, and we expect August to be up a couple of percentage points."  Last year's record was enhanced by the fact that July 2005 had five weekends, which helped push it over the top in business.

"Avoiding any serious weather consequences," Mr. James predicted that "2006 as a whole will be the best we ever had."

At Phillips Crab House, Mike Meekins, assistant general manager, said they also had a record season last year making it a difficult task to improve on this year. "At present we are a little bit off," he said, but added "at the end of the year I'm sure we will all be happy with it (the season)."

Phillips runs three restaurants in Ocean City. He said last year they had a good June, but July, August and September "were huge."  It is difficult to match record-breaking years, he said, but this season the restaurants are all doing well.   

He noted that there seems to be less traffic in town this year which could be the result of higher prices at gas pumps and because of more expensive hotel rooms. In contrast, Mr. Meekins revealed that menu prices at Phillips have not been increased in years.

Susan Jones, of the Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association, said "It's hard to pinpoint a trend.  Some businesses are doing great, others are doing the same as last year and others are not doing as well as last year."

Room taxes were up in June, she acknowledged, but that is not a perfect barometer of business. She noted that the new Hilton Hotel at 32nd Street opened this season with some rooms costing as much as $439 a night. This results in increasing room tax revenues considerably without necessarily increasing the number of visitors to Ocean City.

Also visitors are changing their way of organizing trips to the resort, merchants have reported. The Internet is playing a much bigger role in the decision-making process than toll-free telephones once did.

Ms. Abbott's office reported that messages on the town's 800 toll-free number are down 25 percent so far this year while Web site users are up by 20 percent in the last six weeks. There is an average of 1,126 web site hits every day, they reported.
That change has also be noted at the Carousel. Mr. James said people are making reservations later this year, using the Internet in May and June rather than toll free telephone planning as early as late winter or early spring as in the past.

The two time-honored methods of measuring how heavy the flow of business is in town are the one percent food tax (exclusive to Ocean City in Worcester County) and the demo flush figures. Food tax revenues are up slightly at one percent and demo flush reports for the first half of the year is up by 156,496 to 3,413,041.

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