www.usatoday.com
GRAND ISLE, La. — On this sliver of land, summer is high season. And on a typical weekend, Artie's Sports Bar would be crammed with more than 1,000 patrons peering at the ocean.
But this is no ordinary summer. The oil spill that has sent more than 90 million gallons of crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico has seeped into the island's bayous, roughly 50 miles from the sunken rig that sparked the leak. And visitors aren't coming. Frankie Marullo, whose brother owns Artie's, says there have been only a few dozen customers a day. And he fears those who are staying away this year may never return.
"The tourism business is shot," he says. "This place is wiped out. It's going to kill this little island."
Vacationers are starting to steer clear of the Gulf Coast. The worst oil spill in U.S. history, which has endangered wildlife and stymied the fishing and oil trades so vital to the region's economy, now is threatening the multibillion-dollar tourism industry as wary visitors cancel trips or plan vacations to places where they don't have to worry about oil coming ashore.
"There's a big concern it might be fine now, 'But what about 30 days from now, when I'm there?' " says Anne Banas, executive editor of SmarterTravel.com. "So you see some people canceling, but other people booking other destinations right off the bat."
Oil has been leaking for more than 65 days, since a Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by oil giant BP exploded on April 20, killing 11 men. On Wednesday, authorities advised people not to swim or wade in waters off a large portion of Pensacola Beach because a significant amount of oil had come ashore.
Florida's Pensacola Beach was among the latest shore areas to be given a swimming advisory. Similar warnings have been issued at various times for the Gulf waters off Fort Morgan, Ala.; Perdido Key, Fla.; and some other parts of the coast.
However, most beaches in the Gulf states of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida have remained open — even if the water has been off-limits at times. President Obama and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, who visited Orange Beach over Father's Day weekend, are among the many government and tourism officials encouraging vacationers to head to the coast and help the tourism industry.
However, a barrage of news reports showing marine life coated with oil and workers scouring the shoreline in spots such as Perdido Key has made beachgoers wary. Lodging owners from Gulf Shores, Ala., to Fort Walton Beach, Fla., say bookings are down, with some seeing a particularly steep drop in reservations for July and August. Charter boat guides across Florida are seeing cancellations and fielding fewer reservations.
And here in Grand Isle, where the population normally grows from roughly 1,500 to more than 10,000 during the summer, locals count only about 100 tourists. The local camps and motels are filled instead with contract workers and members of the military, here to help with the spill cleanup effort.
"It's taken our livelihood from us," says Josie Cheramie, head of the Grand Isle Tourist Commission. "If you don't have tourists and you don't have fishing, what are you going to have?"
Blake Fleetwood, who owns five travel agencies in the New York City area, says that half of his clients who've booked Gulf Coast vacations are considering canceling, even though he's told them most of the beaches are fine.
"It's the fear more so than reality," says Fleetwood, who had a group of 20 recently switch a tennis-playing excursion from Key West to South Carolina. "They just see it's in the Gulf. It's close by. And they have heard so many lies about this oil spill and how many gallons (have spilled) they don't really believe anybody. They think it's better to be safe than sorry."
'It may be the final straw'
For those who rely on tourism for their livelihoods, the spill couldn't have come at a worse time. Summer is prime tourist season for communities dotting the Gulf. Louisiana saw $1.36 billion of its more than $8 billion in tourism dollars generated by its Gulf region last year. Alabama's beaches produced 25% of the $9.2 billion in tourism dollars reaped by the state in 2009. And of the 19 million visitors who flocked to Mississippi July 2008 through June 2009, 5.5 million traveled to the state's three coastal counties.
In Mississippi, the spill could result in a $120 million loss to non-casino tourism in the state's coastal areas this summer, according to a study released this month by the University of Southern Mississippi. And the average daily rates for hotels in the Gulf region continue to drop, according to the travel website Travelocity. For example, before May 15, hotel bookings for June in Panama City, Fla., were averaging $122 a night at Travelocity. But June bookings made from May 15 to June 22 fell on average to $96.
Some vacationers who would have headed to the coast say they're planning trips to other parts of the South, such as North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Arizona, the Caribbean and Europe also are alternative destinations, travel watchers and planners say.
Joe Dew and his wife are among the Gulf Coast faithful who won't be there this summer.
The couple usually look forward to a Gulf Coast getaway each July. It's a chance to take a plane ride and relax in shorefront enclaves such as Naples and St. Petersburg, Fla.
But Dew is so worried about wayward crude that he and his wife have decided to avoid even beach vacation spots far from the spill, including those along the Atlantic Coast. Instead, they will drive 90 minutes from their home to the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina.
"We knew we weren't going to the Gulf Coast, but we were still considering places along the Atlantic, in South Carolina and Florida," says Dew, who lives in Morrisville, N.C. Then, he says, "We decided the safest thing to do to make sure that we didn't have to deal with anything related to oil was to stay here and go to a place we knew we could count on. ... It's only once a year we're able to get away alone. It has to really count. So I don't want to run the risk we're going to be dealing with oil."
Clear waters but few tourists
A looming problem for the Gulf's tourism industry, says travel agent Fleetwood, is that travelers like Dew who venture to new places may decide to keep going there — and not to the Gulf Coast — in subsequent years.
"The repercussions could go on for years," Fleetwood says. "When you lose groups or vacationers, they try some place else and then they like the other thing just as well or better. This is a particularly fragile time for the hotel industry ... and in the area affected, it may be the final straw."
Parts of the Gulf Coast continue to thrive. Hotels and eateries in New Orleans, many of which have struggled since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, have had their best year since the storm, says Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau. Downtown hotels have had fewer than 2% cancellations since the oil leak began.
The area around Pensacola had also been doing well. Lodging occupancy was up by double digits in May over the same time last year.
But tourism officials now predict a 10% to 20% drop in revenue and occupancy in June and July and a 20% plunge in August, according to a report by Ed Schroeder of the Pensacola Bay Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Julian MacQueen, owner of the Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front and several other hotels on the coast, says that before the massive oil leak, occupancy was up 20% over last year. But fear of oil seeping onto local beaches has caused the uptick to go flat.
"Our reservations have gone down and stayed down," he says.
Watching the usual flood of tourists slow to a trickle is particularly frustrating for boat guides and business owners gazing out at clear waters.
"We were just beginning to recover from Katrina, and here we are again," says Mary McLaurin, 58, a store owner in Bay St. Louis, Miss., where oil had not come ashore but tourism is still down 10% from last year. "I can buy new equipment or buy more groceries (after a hurricane), but I can't take perceptions out of people's minds."
Florida fish and wildlife conservation officials say only fishing areas in the northwest corner of Florida have been directly affected by the spill. But Pat Kelly, president of the Florida Guides Association, says charter boat guides throughout the state are reporting cancellations.
"That perception of the big bad wolf — which didn't show up yet — is still hanging over our heads," Kelly says.
Restaurants also are struggling. Amy Martin, whose family firm, McGuire's, owns four eateries in the Pensacola area, says the number of customers is down 50% in June compared with last year, while sales have dropped 25%. "It's worse and worse every day," she says.
Renee Lefeaux, 44, and her family only recently had gotten their beachfront condo on Alabama's Orange Beach into rental condition after it was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
In early June, the day before she says the Perdido Pass was closed to all but work crew barges, she and her daughter went parasailing. Instead of the seaweed tumbling and rolling, it was clumping together in a way that didn't seem natural, she recalls.
"We knew firsthand it was coming," Lefeaux, who lives in Baton Rouge, says of the oil. "It was only a matter of days. ... It was very sad."
Now, the guests who had planned to rent the condo are dropping those plans left and right. "I had booked through August, and now there's not a soul booked the rest of the year," Lefeaux says.
Celebrities, local businesses and tourism officials are pitching in to try to woo reluctant travelers. Hotels are offering steep discounts or guarantees that they'll give guests refunds or credits if oil appears during their stay. Singer Jimmy Buffett, an Alabama native who's opening a hotel in Pensacola this summer, will host a free concert in Gulf Shores on July 1 to promote the coast.
'So many unknowns'
State tourism directors in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, which each received $15 million in compensation for lost business from BP, along with Florida, which received $25 million, say they'll use much of the money for advertising campaigns aimed at allaying vacationers' fears.
"Phones are not ringing ... the way it should be this time of the year," says Mary Beth Wilkerson, director of the Mississippi Development Authority's Tourism Division. "To combat that, we're messaging that we haven't had any significant intrusion of oil close to our beaches."
New Orleans has launched a $5 million campaign, using BP funds given to the state. It's seeking $75 million more from the company to make sure the spill doesn't sully its resurrected image.
"We were doing so well," says Perry of the New Orleans visitors' bureau. "This has the potential, if it's not managed and marketed against, to damage us once again."
Some tourism and leisure business owners say they'll file compensation claims for a share of the $20 billion that BP is setting aside in a fund for victims of the spill that will be run by Kenneth Feinberg, the White House's "pay czar." Some who've already filed claims complain that the process so far, as administered by people hired by BP, has been difficult, with ever-changing requirements for multiple documents. Even if claims are handled better, some fear compensation won't cover losses.
Ed Lane, 56, chief financial officer for Coastal Community Bank in Panama City Beach, Fla., says that it will be hard for BP to make up for what has been lost. "I don't think BP has the means to make everyone whole," Lane says. His bank has seen borrowers back out of loans for second homes, afraid they'll not be able to rent out or ultimately resell the properties if oil reaches the area. "There are so many unknowns. ... How many people are not even looking in this area right now for a home that my bank would have had the opportunity to finance?"
Even so, Dew, the North Carolinian who's avoiding vacationing on the Gulf this summer, says he remains hopeful his family will return — soon.
"We love it," he says of the Gulf Coast. "My hope is that ... the ocean and Mother Nature take care of what's going on in better ways than we can expect. We're hoping next year things will be calmed down and we'll say, 'Let's go to the Gulf.' "
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