Sunday, Mar. 30, 2008

Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce fields more orders for vacation guide

Tens of thousands more people than usual ordered Myrtle Beach vacation planners in January, and tourism leaders are beginning to find out a little more about who exactly they are.

Online surveys of people who ordered the Stay & Play vacation planners produced by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce show that people who ordered the guides are more likely than last year to be new to the area - good news for businesses trying to lure customers.

Myrtle Beach relies on a core of repeat vacationers, but it has been throwing millions of dollars into advertising and promotion to attract new visitors.

Business leaders say the area sorely needs new visitors because it has overbuilt its hotel industry over the past decade.

About 35 percent of people surveyed - up from 30 percent last year - said they had either never visited Myrtle Beach or had been here more than five years ago.

That may as well be never, because Myrtle Beach has gone through earthshaking changes since 2001, chamber President Brad Dean said.

The good news is that 95 percent of people said they liked the look of the vacation planner, which has more than 275 pages of ads, information and articles about the area's hotels and entertainment. They also said they found it useful.

The chamber said vacation planner orders were up more than 425 percent in January, with much of that attributed to the heavy advertising and publicity around the two presidential primary debates held here.

Response to the survey is up substantially, too, but not proportionally: 1,909 people had completed the 2008 survey through Wednesday, about 72 percent more than the 1,110 who completed it to that date in 2007.

Brunswick OKs software

The Brunswick County, N.C., Tourism Development Authority is starting on a plan to develop software that tracks potential visitors.

The authority's board this week voted to approve spending $30,000 to develop software that would coordinate databases with information from people who have expressed interest in the area.

Smith Advertising & Associates Inc., in Fayetteville, N.C., is going to develop the software, said Mitzi York, executive director of the authority.

Also, the authority's board voted to hire an additional staff member to manage the databases and keep information on NCBrunswick.com and VisitNC.com up-to-date.

ONLINE

See more survey results from potential visitors at MyrtleBeachOnline.com/money.