Doug Mouton / Northshore Bureau Chief
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- On Pensacola Beach it’s not just spring break for locals. The Hawkins family came here from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“It’s awesome here. It’s so beautiful,” Kristen Hawkins. “I love it.”
Kristen Hawkins looked but couldn’t find any remnants of the oil spill.
“I think it’s really nice, very clear, no litter, nothing,” she said. “Can’t tell there was an oil spill.”
Tourism leaders say they fight a daily battle out here: misconceptions about lingering effects of oil.
“We still have a lot of questions. People think that we still have a lot of oil on the beaches. People think the seafood is not safe,” said Linda Lee, a “Visit Pensacola” spokeswoman.
The Wach family from Virginia said they expected to see oil damage and actually came here to try and help the economy.
“We’ve been to beaches all up and down the east coast, and we decided that we wanted to see this part of the country,” said John Wach of Virginia Beach, Virginia. “Combined with the fact that we feel bad about the people down here and how they’ve been affected by the oil spill, we decided to head this way this year for spring break.”
Thanks to families like the Wachs and Hawkins’s, optimism here is growing.
“We’ve never seen this active of a year, ever,” said Fred Simmons.
Simmons rents out 140 beach homes and condos on Pensacola Beach. He lost, he said, 50 to 60 percent of his business last year.
But this year, he said, early bookings are strong.
“It’s the biggest indicator in my opinion of what the beach summer business is going to be like, and right now we’re three times the bookings we normally do,” Simmons said. “So it looks like it’s going to be a fabulous summer.”
Tourism leaders say Pensacola Beach rentals are up 14 percent from this time last year, which was pre-spill.
“Definitely a very strong start, and typically when we’ve had a strong season for snow birds followed by a strong spring break, then the summer vacationers have followed, and we are really hoping that that’s the case this year,” Lee said. “Our industry needs it more than ever.”
It has been a strong spring here, but for this community, their money is made over the summer. And while all the indicators are positive, they won’t really know what kind of summer they’re having until at least Memorial Day.
“We’ve had the best March at the hotel that we’ve ever had, we had the best March at the bar and grill here that we’ve ever had, and our beach house and rental business was the best March we’ve ever had in the history of the business,” Simmons said. “So there seems to be that it’s really coming back – hopefully.”
