South Carolina tourism data shows persistent weakness

After posting losses that eclipsed $ 5.7 billion Last year, due to the coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent social outages, tourism in South Carolina was obviously limping in 2021.

The first indicators for this year are also showing a persistent weakness in the industry – which means sustained problems for what is typically one of the main economic drivers of the state of Palmetto.

According to data released on Friday by the Department of Recreation and Tourism Parks of SC (SCPRT), the state of Palmetto was lagging behind the region and the rest of the country with a modest 45.1 percent occupancy rate for the week ending February 20, 2021.

That’s almost twenty percent below the same week last year … and let’s not forget, this industry didn’t exactly enter the Covid-19 recession by shooting all cylinders.

In the same week, the occupancy rate in the Southeast was 53.9 percent, while the national rate was 48.1 percent.

Although SCPRT has not published weekly revenue data for Tourism Economics in almost two months, it continued to disclose weekly revenue data per available room (or “RevPAR”), as well as information on the number of “nights of accommodation sold”.

As expected, these metrics continued to take a beating last week …

(Click to view)

(Via: SCPRT)

As you can see in the chart above, RevPAR in South Carolina reached a modest $ 38.11 for the week ending February 20 – which was low 31.8 percent the same week in 2020 and down 32.5 percent year-to-date compared to the previous year.

Meanwhile, there was an estimate 363,000 room nights sold – down 18.7 percent compared to the same week last year and below 19.4 percent in the year to the current date.

All of these declines were worse on a percentage basis than the monthly declines posted by the industry during the month of January … indicating the sustained smoothness of the so-called “recovery”.

“The year 2021 started as expected, as the state continues to respond to a pandemic,” noted tourism officials. “Both hotels and short-term rentals underperformed business in January 2020.”

SCPRT officials have also released some disappointing tax revenues from the last two months of 2020.

December accommodation tax revenue (reflecting November 2020 business) recorded $ 4.3 million. Although this total represented a modest increase for the month, collections in the first five months of the state’s fiscal year (which started on July 1, 2020) were only $ 40.2 million – a decline in 13.3 percent the same period last year.

Meanwhile, January admission taxes (reflecting the December 2020 business) registered anemia $ 1.6 million. That was shocking 40.5 percent decline for the month. In the first six months of the state’s fiscal year – from July to December 2020 – collections totaled $ 15.4 million, a decline of 37.3 percent the same period last year.

As we noted in a previous post, the 2021 figures will only be useful for comparison purposes until the first week of March – which is when we should revert to the 2019 data if we want to have a real “deviation from normal” feeling.

Why? Because mid-March of last year is very close to the time when the first wave of the pandemic began to close large areas of the American economy – causing the state’s tourist economy to fully enter the crater.

The industry recovered in late spring … a little … but the momentum was short-lived.

Founding editor of this news medium Will Folks remains optimistic about the long-term potential of the State of Palmetto with regard to tourism.

“The 187-mile coastline of South Carolina – anchored by picturesque Hilton Head, historic Charleston and the inimitable Grand Strand – is a huge competitive asset,” he noted last fall. “This offers the state of Palmetto a tremendous opportunity to emerge from the coronavirus recession on a more solid economic basis than many other states.”

Unfortunately, state leaders – led by the status quo governor Henry McMaster -continue doubling the same failed “destination marketing” approach administered by the government to promote tourism.

Rather than imposing what amounts to a “tourist tax” on citizens and small businesses, Folks argued in favor of reducing taxes, diversifying our destinations, cleaning our beaches, protecting our history and focusing on public safety as a central government function (particularly in Charleston and Myrtle Beach, where violent criminals ran free last year).

-FITSNews

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