The most first-time visitors ever came to the Grand Strand in 2010, and business leaders can't take it for granted that they'll come back next year, according to a consultant and area chamber of commerce officials.
About 150 people gathered Thursday morning at Marina Inn at Grande Dunes for a forum on the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce's marketing efforts.
Among the presentations, consultant John Pelletier discussed the results of a new survey commissioned by the chamber and conducted by his firm Equation Research that sought to learn more about the people who visited in 2010. The study found that visitors are seeing and, in some cases, basing their choices on the chamber's advertising efforts. It also downplayed the importance of the Gulf oil spill in bringing visitors and found traffic problems may hold back future growth.
First-timers made up 27 percent of all visitors, and there's no guarantee they'll return, Pelletier said. The area also can't count on the 73 percent who are repeat visitors to come back, he said.
"You can't always put that in the bank yet. ... The recession threw loyalty out the window," he said.
Travelers are more cost-conscious after the recession, and the Strand must continue offering better value than its competitors, Pelletier said.
The area without a doubt had more first-time visitors this year than ever before, said Brad Dean, president and chief executive of Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, after Thursday's forum. The chamber plans to release a separate study including information on the raw number of first-time travelers some time early next year.
Increased visitors also mean increased traffic, which could backfire on the area, Pelletier said. More than 3.5 million people might think twice before visiting again because of traffic, the survey found.
"It takes one year of being jammed and the newspapersgetting on it and the TV stations getting on it, and it takes four or five years to recover," Pelletier said.
That's just a further sign that South Carolina needs to gain funding for Interstate 73, Dean said. The highway was first proposed nearly 20 years ago and would connect Myrtle Beach to Michigan, but the project has been slow to gain funding.
Many have asked how the state can afford to pay for the road, but at the risk of losing nearly 4 million visitors, Dean said, "The real question is, can we afford not to build it?"
Hotel and condo-hotel occupancy far surpassed expectations this summer, up about 8 percentage points from last year, according to a Coastal Carolina University study. Hoteliers, academics and officials have attributed the increases to some combination of a slight economic rebound, vacationers fleeing the Gulf oil spill, increased airline traffic and more advertising from the chamber
Pelletier said he credits chamber marketing for most of the 2010 gains. More than 80 percent of visitors had seen Myrtle Beach advertisements in the six months before their visit, and of those, 48 percent said the ads influenced their decision to vacation on the Grand Strand, he said.
The Gulf oil spill altered the plans of about 10 percent of those who ultimately chose to visit Myrtle Beach, Pelletier said.
The crowd thinned during the speeches by chamber officials on the organization's marketing efforts that followed Pelletier's presentation.
In 2011, the chamber aims to spread its advertising more evenly throughout the year, marketing head Scott Schult said. That's a shift from this year, when the chamber used its marketing dollars on a large advertising campaign in the lead-up to the peak season before ceasing TV commercials in the summer and returning for a short campaign in the fall, Schult said.
The chamber is increasingly focused on online and TV advertising while it scales back its print advertising, he said. Marketing on mobile phones is the next step, he said.
"Mobile is where everything is going, and it's going there fast," Schult said.
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