Grand Strand busy with tourists after holiday weekend

While the Fourth of July weekend is now over and many tourists have packed up and headed home, the lasting effects of their time spent here could mean good things for the Grand Strand.

Even though the official numbers have not been released, many in the industry say that business was better than expected over the holiday.

Around noon Monday, Ocean Boulevard still seemed to be busy with tourists from all over, many who were getting into town and many that decided to stay past the July Fourth weekend.

Employees at the Odyssey hotel tell News 13 that they stayed busy from Friday through Sunday.

Several beach access points were also already packed with people and even some of the parking lots and garages were full of cars.

Amanda Jenkins with the Myrtle Beach State Park said the campground stayed full of campers the entire weekend and sometimes officials were unable to allow more people to come in.

“For the first time in ten years we actually had to close the gates for a few hours because we just had no room and had to tell them that we will open once we re-evaluate the space,” said Jenkins.

Jenkins also said that the campground had a little over 20,000 campers including the weekend and all 300 of their campsites were full on Monday.

Camper Cindy Parker who came with her family for the third time in a row said she was glad that they weren’t one of the several families that were being turned away.

“We just came up from Huntington State park where we stayed for the weekend and will be spending the week at Myrtle Beach State park, and I made reservations for this place eleven months ago, that’s what people have to do so you don’t get turned away,” explained Parker.

The campground wasn’t the only spot seeing a crowd over the weekend, employees at Market Common said that they also had people pouring in from all over.

“Over the weekend especially on Saturday when we had fireworks this place was jam packed, we had people all around the lake we had people in the park we had people all through out Market Common watching the fireworks,“ said marketing manager, Hatton Gravely.