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Room at the inn
By Times staff writers Even war and recession can't stop the determined debauchery of spring break on Panama City Beach. But Mickey Mouse has fewer guests, forcing him to lay off thousands of cast members at the Magic Kingdom. And Jay Baron of B&B Cabana Rental on Clearwater Beach couldn't pay his employee for weeks at time. "It's been a nightmare," he said. "I sat here in this hut the last month not making a penny. Thank God my wife works." Six months after terrorists changed the rules of travel, it's a mixed tourist season in Florida. Slower traffic in March, the busiest month for those who cater to leisure travelers, means trouble later in the year. Banks are already shutting down some Orlando hotels that have missed their mortgage payments. Those who remain are offering steep discounts to survive. One reason: airlines supply Orlando and Miami with more than three-quarters of their visitors. But air travel is down. And a mild winter up North means fewer tourists. "Yes, there has been some recovery, but it's been soft," said Austin Mott, president and chief executive officer of Visit Florida Inc., the state government's tourist marketing agency. "The places having a good two or three weeks this March are more used to two or three good months of winter." Here are dispatches from four tourist hot spots by Times Staff Writers Mark Albright in Orlando, Scott Barancik in Clearwater Beach, Kris Hundley in Panama City and Robert Trigaux in South Beach. • • • The 'American Riviera' shows its resilience
SOUTH BEACH -- Orlando may boast of its gargantuan theme parks. Tampa Bay can brag about gulf beaches. And Panama City, well, it can whoop all it wants about beer-swilling spring breakers. But here on Miami Beach -- where a stunning 96 percent of the tourists arrive by airplane, where the 8.1 percent unemployment rate runs higher than in any other metro area in the state -- there's trendy South Beach. Tucked on the southern tip of a condo canyon stretching the length of Miami Beach, the party hearty "SoBe" scene still draws plenty of visitors (if less glitterati) in this toughest of tourist seasons. Where else in Florida is a mere 15 blocks bestowed with so many nicknames? American Riviera. Manhattan South. Tropical Bohemia. Beverly Hills 33139.Hollywood East. So what if, after Sept. 11 and a dampening recession, South Beach's buzz has dropped a few dozen decibels? Who cares if SoBe still awakens to a bit of an economic hangover? Hey, nothing stays trendy forever. At its peak in the mid-90's, South Beach was an international glitz magnet, attracting the world's top models, Hollywood stars, Madonna groupies and an international jet set to free-styling night clubs that only bothered to close at 5 a.m. Now a slightly sobered SoBe has sadly bid farewell to much of the "been there, done that" crowd. Though the show starring "Elaine Lancaster," a 6-foot-11 drag queen (counting heels and big hair) remains a hot ticket, the supermodels and camera crews are flitting off to Spain and South Africa in search of fresher (and cheaper) backdrops and party scenes. Don't get me wrong. There are still plenty of long midnight lines to get into South Beach clubs like Tantra, where the floor is live grass and bottled mineral water runs $65, or B.E.D., where there are no chairs, just beds. ("I went to B.E.D. with five women last night! Get it?") And the prices to stay in Ocean Drive's hip boutique hotels, like the $525 price tag for a standard room at The Tides, have rebounded sharply from late September when South Beach was briefly a tourism ghost town. Still, South Beach isn't all the way back. Locals speak of "20 percent" as the typical drop in business from a year ago. Just last week, at peak tourist season, finding parking places on Ocean Drive was almost easy. And this time more were filled with minivans from Minnesota than the usual hive of bright yellow Porsche Boxster convertibles. One South Beach tourist line forms early each day. Camera-toting tourists wait their turn to stand outside the green gates to the Versace mansion, the only private residence on Ocean Drive. It seems ghoulish, but tourists still love shooting their friends at the very spot where Andrew Cunanan gunned down celebrated fashion designer Gianni Versace in 1997. South Beach knows how to swim with the tide. By December, Versace's mansion is slated to open as Casa Casuarina, a 15-room hotel preserved exactly (so they say) as Versace left it. Rooms will run between $2,000 and $6,000 a night. It will be one of the most expensive hotels in the world. Now that's SoBe optimism. Or commercialization. Or arrogance. Right after Sept. 11, when travel cancellations were rampant, Miami was losing an estimated $15-million a day. Passenger traffic at Miami International Airport dropped by 60 percent. It's still down about 20 percent, and not expected to rebound until 2003. Nonetheless, don't underestimate the resilience of this tourist mecca. To reach South Beach directly from Miami, drive past the port where the huge cruise ship industry claims it is enjoying an unusually swift rebound from last fall. Looming along Miami Beach are ever-larger, ever-snazzier condominium towers, as if demand is insatiable. Condo prices range from $300,000 to more than $10-million. Some condo buyers are retirees and baby boomers. Many are high net-worth Latins from such unstable countries as Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia, whose flight capital out of Latin America is often invested in the relatively secure and familiar Miami Beach real estate market. About one quarter of the estimated $9-billion that flew out of Venezuela in 2001 went into South Florida bank accounts. In the case of struggling Argentina, South Florida absorbed close to $1-billion in flight capital in just the fourth quarter of 2001. That flow of money is a big reason funky South Beach is now bracketed by towering high-end condos. At the southern tip lies the fancy Continuum, where condos start at $853,000. To the north, next to Miami Beach's famed Fontainbleau Hotel lies -- what else? -- the new 36-story Fontainbleau II "condo hotel." Now there's talk of overbuilding and another condo bust in the making. But up close, on the pastel art deco streets of South Beach, worry over the tourist economy seems miles away. The weather's fine. Soon it will be party time once again. -- ROBERT TRIGAUX • • • Shorter waits, cheaper rooms, fewer jobs
"Last year it was shoulder-to-shoulder here," said Gail Wheeler, a Houston woman visiting for her daughter Amanda's high school cheerleading competition at Walt Disney World. "Except for 40 minutes at Splash Mountain, the theme park lines were pretty short this time. We didn't wait at all on a fair amount of them." "The hotels are a lot cheaper," said Tara Martin, a spring breaker from Northern Kentucky University. She checked into a $79-a-night Courtyard by Marriott on Disney property that usually fetches more than $175 this time of year. Here in the nation's largest hotel market, it will be "2003 before we get back where we were in 2000," said Bill Peeper, president of the Orlando/Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Beyond problems in the United States, Orlando is also suffering from fewer foreign tourists, thanks to recession in their home countries. Experts predict that business won't rebound fully until 2006. It's not a pretty picture. Airlines cut seats flying out of Orlando this month by 12 percent. Hotel room demand improved in February, but it's still down about 3 percent from last year. And they are generating far less cash. Collateral damage is piling up. Lenders foreclosed on a few old hotels. Others are missing mortgage payments. Howard Johnson Enchanted Land, a storybook-themed hotel with fairy princess beds, was the Howard Johnson Inn of the Year in 2001. This year, nervous lenders replaced the management. "We've been able to get into the low $50s," said Barry Brackbill, the bank-appointed manager of the 160-room hotel. That's down from peak-season rates of $75 to $100. State Rep. Randy Johnson, R-Winter Garden, is talking up property tax relief for cash-poor hotels. March is crucial for hotels. They try to earn enough in peak times to carry them through slower months. Consider the Embassy Suites on International Drive. Ron Caimano, general manager, said the average daily rate is $5 less than last March. That's $35,000 out of the budget. Orlando's fortunes ripple statewide. Almost a third of all hotel rooms in Florida are located there. The huge theme parks are such a draw that more than half of Florida's 69-million tourists last year spent at least a day there. The theme parks are hunkered down. Disney postponed indefinitely the March opening of the new 2,500 room Pop Century Hotel and kept many of its other 22,000 hotel rooms out of service. Disney World is pouring $250-million into promoting Walt Disney's 100th birthday celebration. Payrolls are being built back up. But priority goes to keeping full-timers busy. So thousands of part-timers like Paul Marshall waited months for a call to return to work as a part-time concierge at Disney's Yacht Club. "I went from part-timer to no-timer," he said. Discounting draws a more frugal tourist. They tip less. Attendance at many cheaper, second-tier attractions such as Gatorland are up because vacationers spend less time at the pricey theme parks. Even new glittering new properties such as the $450-million Gaylord Palms, have their problems. Corporate conferences are booked years in advance, but attendance is down 10 percent. "Instead meeting the goal of 78 percent occupancy our first year, it will be more like 75 percent," said John Caparella, general manager of the 1,406 room resort. Even Harris Rosen, Orlando's biggest discounter and owner of 5,000 hotel rooms, responded to the slump. Last March he promoted $45.99 room rates on his electronic billboards on Interstate 4. This March the price is $39.95. "It's going to be at least late 2002 before we recover," said Rosen, "But if a terrorist like that guy with the exploding shoe succeeds, it's going to be more like six years." -- MARK ALBRIGHT • • • 'The Super Bowl and Oscars rolled into one'PANAMA CITY BEACH -- Playboy's Miss April is at the Chevron station. The rapper Master P is pulling into Club La Vela, where MTV is taping Spring Break Under Cover. And NASCAR driver Robby Gordon is playing body parts trivia with the crowd behind Spinnaker's.
About 850,000 college students go on spring break nationwide during the second week of March. Thousands of them found their way to the white sands and two-lane strip in this Panhandle resort town. Even when money is tight and flying is a hassle, students from as far away as Michigan and Missouri can still cram in a car and drive 18 hours to Panama City Beach. Unlike some other party destinations, this Gulf Coast town officially welcomes spring breakers with open arms. The mom-and-pop motels offer cheap rates and permit eight people per room. The bigger resorts pull students in with a week-long, all-you-can drink keg party for $50. Guys outnumber gals about two to one, prompting behavior akin to sharks circling chum. The guys tote a beer in one hand, a camcorder in the other and carry dozens of glittery Mardi Gras beads around their necks, trying to entice the women to bare their breasts for the camera. Julie Bahar and Anne Kaneflin, both juniors at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, blew off dozens of such requests as they partied at Hammerhead Harry's on Monday night. "The guys were really grabby," Bahar said. "If they think I'm going to flash for the camera, they're crazy." Both girls quickly retreated to the relative safety of their hotel, the Marriott Bay Point Resort, which is off the strip and considered dull by most college students. Robert Rudd of the University of Virginia said his hotel was overbooked and they tried to stick him and his seven buddies out at the Marriott. "I told them no way," Rudd said as he headed into a shop to try on pukka-shell chokers. "A friend of mine stayed there and said the place is filled with 60-year-old men." His group opted for the Sandpiper Beacon motel where $380 per person got them rooms, six pools, a "Lazy River" for tubing and non-stop beer. For merchants along this seven-mile stretch of beach, this is the month to snag money from the wallets of partying college and high school kids. Last year, the official count for spring break was 400,000 kids spending about $55-million. This year, the convention and visitors bureau expects at least 500,000 to spend their vacation and their money here. Two reasons fuel their high hopes: After Sept. 11, fewer kids are flying to arch-rival Cancun. And for the first time, the city hired a marketing company, YouthStream of New York City, to hawk Panama City Beach in college papers on 100 campuses east of the Mississippi. Bob Warren, president of the bureau, said early reports from hotels indicate occupancy is about 20 percent ahead of last year. But local business owners don't seem convinced. Joey Spindler, owner of Gulf Coast Professional Tattoo on the strip, said business may be up a little over last year, but last year was horrible. "It's early in the week though," Spindler conceded, noting that most students get a tattoo the day before they leave town. "Right now we just have a lot of lookers." Sparky Sparkman, owner of Spinnaker, one of the biggest clubs on the beach, disputed the official figures. "I could retire in a few years if we got 500,000 kids here for spring break," he said as a long line of students waited to enter his club. "I think we're lucky if we get half that." Whatever the number, Patrick West, YouthStream's director of event marketing, has convinced an impressive lineup of major brands to hawk their stuff in Panama City Beach. On the beach behind Spinnaker's, Panasonic is launching a new digital video camera the size of a pack of cigarettes and a tiny MP3 player. Inside a darkened tent, Sony is debuting a new PlayStation 2 game. Powerade's logo is splashed on a rock-climbing wall. Cingular wireless is giving away free phone calls and beach towels. BCBG fragrance hosts massive Twister games. And Calvin Klein, touting its swimsuit line, is bringing Travis the underwear model in for a VIP party. "This is the largest gathering of 18- to 24-year-olds anywhere," said West, a 30-year-old who said he never took a spring break. "This is the Super Bowl and Oscars rolled into one." West said the kids would be disappointed if corporate America wasn't vying for their attention. "These kids expect to see promotions," West said. "Walking on the beach wouldn't keep them busy for a week." -- KRIS HUNDLEY • • • 'Never seen it worse'
"Never seen it worse," Melissas said. Sept. 11 hit Clearwater Beach businesses like a riptide, scaring away Europeans and even some Americans. The weak Canadian dollar and an unseasonably warm winter up north didn't help. And while Spring Break has tossed businesses here a lifesaver, most are still in deep water. Clearwater Parasail is also experiencing a modest comeback. A week ago Friday it had 28 customers, its biggest take in six months, employee Todd Reese said. During the offseason it was lucky to get 10 customers a week. Hotel chains are working hard to turn things around. Sales at the 216-room Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort year are down about 15 percent this year. That partly reflects an anomaly: the crush of tourists who came for the January 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa. But general manager Steve Book also blames an estimated 40 percent drop in European visitors. There's little Book can do to reassure European tourists. "If there's terrorism going on in the U.S., the Europeans have so many other places they can travel," he said. "Why would they take a chance?" To compensate, he's boosted in-state advertising and offered deals to persuade drivers to stay longer, such as five nights for the price of four. It's not easy, though. He's "competing for that same dollar" with hotels in Daytona, Miami Beach and elsewhere. Also down a bit is the 217-room Adam's Mark Clearwater Beach Hotel. To boost slumping sales, general manager Tim Coultas has lowered its lowest room rate to $155 from $170, run ads featuring even steeper discounts in Orlando, and begun offering discounts on Web sites like Travelocity.com. "I could drop my rate 50 percent and be sold out all this week, but I wouldn't do that," he said. "It's rate integrity." By noon on Monday, only 13 of 54 rooms at the Travelodge Beachview were rented. Front desk clerk Greg Hoch said one reason is cancellations by Canadian tourists. In an about face, the hotel is honoring discounts for members of AAA and AARP. Sales are down 15 percent at the local Walgreens. To rouse revenues manager Emmanuel Vestas will keep the store open 24 hours a day during March and April, versus the regular 8a.m.-to-midnight schedule. But anyone hoping to ride the Easter wave to a speedy recovery may be disappointed, especially hotel owners. Last year, Easter came on April 15, well after Spring Break. That meant two distinct periods of high traffic. This year it comes on March 31, truncating the overall holiday period. "It'd be like having Super Bowl over Easter Break," said the Holiday Inn's Book. "You can't get more rooms sold." -- SCOTT BARANCIK
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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ORLANDO -- Vacationers found great deals and few lines in Mickey and Shamu's backyard.
