Holiday beach travel expected to be heavy 

Posted: 7:57 pm Wed, May 26, 2010
By Liz Farmer
Daily Record Business Writer

STEVENSVILLE, Md.—If you’re planning on hopping in the car and getting out of town this weekend for the Memorial Day holiday, be prepared — nearly 544,000 other Marylanders have the same idea.

AAA Mid-Atlantic announced Wednesday it expects a 6.4 percent increase in total Maryland travel this holiday weekend to roughly 639,900 people taking a trip away from home. About 85 percent — or 543,915 — of those people will be on the road.

Ocean City, Maryland’s beach resort, stands to benefit from much of the road travel with the Maryland Transportation Authority predicting that 352,000 cars will travel the Chesapeake Bay Bridge this weekend, up from 335,000 last year. Bridge construction reached a major milestone recently when the last new deck segment was installed, The temporary steel roadway plates are to be removed from westbound travel lanes before the holiday weekend.

Add to that traffic from the Washington, D.C. region with its visitors and locals heading out of town and the transportation authority expects a total of 1.8 million motorists on Maryland’s roads this weekend.

Mahlon G. “Lon” Anderson, managing director for public and government affairs for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said it was the first time in several years the travel organization was predicting a “robust” Memorial Day weekend.

“Today I have no numbers to sugarcoat, no declines to discuss,” Anderson said at a news conference held at Hemmingway’s restaurant, at the foot of the Bay Bridge on the Eastern Shore.

According to the organization’s prediction, Maryland’s travel volume will beat AAA’s expectation for a national average 5.4 percent increase in travelers.

Throughout the recession, Maryland’s tourism economy has fared better than much of the nation. According to the state Office of Tourism, business travel was down by 1.5 percent in 2009 but total visitor trips were up by 3.5 percent, with more than 29 million visitors.

Nationwide, business travel declined 12 percent while visitor trips were down by 5.5 percent in 2009.

In Ocean City there was a 7.7 percent increase in summer visitors to more than 5.5 million people from the beginning of May through September of last year.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Ocean City Mayor Richard Meehan credited the city’s increased tourism advertising budget — made possible through a 0.5 percent increase in the hotel room tax — for the strong numbers.

For roughly a decade the city’s marketing budget stayed flat at $1.6 million. Over the last four years it has increased due to the room tax and last year reached $3.7 million. By comparison, the summer marketing budget for Washington’s Destination D.C., which faced a $1 million budget shortfall in 2009, was $1.2 million last year.

Meehan said the increased visitor numbers in 2009 have helped bring this year’s summer advertising budget to $4 million.

“As everyone else has cut their budget, we didn’t do that,” Meehan said. “And, now, that’s putting us in a great position.”

AAA Mid-Atlantic spokeswoman Ragina Averella said several factors led to higher predictions for Maryland travel this weekend. One is that recent state economic data has looked promising with the state’s unemployment rate dropping slightly in April. It is the first unemployment decline since December of 2007.

In addition, gas prices appear to be staying below $3 a gallon, and Averella said Memorial Day travel tends to be higher when the holiday falls late in the month.

“We view this increase as a result of possible increased consumer confidence as well as pent-up demand to get away this year,” said Averella.