Myrtle Beach chamber: Penny tax has done well for tourism
Aisha Khan/WBTW
The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce presented its tourism tax expenditures and results report to city council Tuesday afternoon.
The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce presented its tourism tax expenditures and results report to city council Tuesday afternoon.
The one cent sales tax went into effect in August after city council voted for it in May.
Chamber president Brad Dean said that the money has already helped increase tourist traffic this year.
“Most of the investment was spent to spur summer business and we saw that our occupancy rates rose,” explained Dean, “more tourists came and that’s carried over to the fall campaign where we are having some phenomenal numbers compared to our competition.”
The chamber spent $4.6 million in magazine, TV and radio advertising to help lure in tourists.
He said because of that, the chamber over the summer months was flooded with hundreds of thousands of calls from new visitors interested in coming to vacation along the Grand Strand.
He said that kind of spending could net over $3 billon for the area, in potential economic revenue.
“Nobody likes additional taxes and fees, but most of the taxes we pay end up in Columbia not here. The tourism fee stays here 100% with tourism promotion,” said Dean, “the one story that we’ve been able to get a lot of publicity out so far is the boardwalk, it’s been attracting a lot of attention and that’s exciting not only for the downtown businesses but for the entire Grand Strand.“
Both the chamber and city council members including Mayor John Rhodes said they had to ignore some of the naysayers that challenged the tax.
Rhodes added that he was impressed with how the chamber has come through on its promise of making good on public use of that money so far.
“Give it a chance to work give it a chance to prove to you that with this money we’re going to be able to generate more jobs in our community we’re going to be able to keep the hotels and the restaurants at a high rate of occupancy,“ Rhodes said.
Rhodes also said that the tourism tax money will provide 20% of the money towards helping property owners with tax credits.
Originally, that was planned for 2011 but Rhodes said it will now be happening sooner than that next year.
Dean said that the chamber is planning to partner up with three new airlines very soon to try to bring in even more deals to the grand strand.
He said the chamber is planning to spend no less than $10 million on its spring season campaign.
Reader Reactions
This is such a cartoon…...God please
let it be over SOON. Everyday is more bizzare. We are all sick of being over exposed to the Mayor….Ex Mayor and the Myrtle Beach Chamber and
The Scum News….. I am embrassed to say I live in this area….
“Brad Dean said that the money has already helped increase tourist traffic this year.”
He says this as if it were some kind of proven fact. How does he know that this money has helped at all? We had a very unusual season with near perfect weather and an economy where people could not afford to go very far from home, so isn’t it more likely that since there were no hurricanes and little to no rainy weather forecast they simply decided to come to the Grand Strand. How does he know that this season had anything at all to do with advertising? In fact we have already heard that pre and post season tourism were down by almost two thirds. Still no one in the Rhodes council are willing to come up with any real replacements for all the tourist that they have already run off. I feel that since Mr. Rhodes did not make good on his words to replace the pre and post season motorcycle tourist with other groups, that it is just one of the reasons that he can not be trusted and should be replaced. I believe that the people have had enough of fancy talking prancing politicians that make all these promises but not only do not deliver but act irrationally on their own and end costing the tax payers in the long run. So far things have only fallen apart in the last few years and the Grand Strand now has a bad reputation throughout the east coast. How much money will they have to spend to make up for all the damage that has been done and how much money does the Chamber of Commerce think that it will take to make things right again if that is even possible.
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