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As local hotel and motel owners dealt with the strain of four hurricanes over recent months, it turned out to be the little things that threw a monkey wrench into the best-laid crisis plans.
Like what do you do when guests flatly refuse to evacuate your hotel? How do you feed 1,000 visitors when the power goes out? And how do you get out the word that you have vacancies when TV stations are saying local hotels are full?
Representatives of Pinellas County's tourism industry met Wednesday afternoon with county emergency management and Progress Energy officials to rehash their performance during the recent series of storms and figure out how to do it better next time.
Carole Ketterhagen, executive director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, said that even though her offices were forced to evacuate for Hurricane Charley, her staff was able to operate from the county's emergency management headquarters. From that location, her staff was able to constantly canvass local hotels for available space and post that information on its Web site.
"I was answering the phone at 10 p.m., taking calls from mobile home residents trying to find a place to go," she said. "It was hands-on Housing Bureau 101."
Pinellas emergency manager Gary Vickers said having representatives of the convention and visitors bureau operating out of his headquarters during Charley was helpful.
"We realized the economic vitality of the community lays on top of tourism," he said. "It gave us greater ability to take care of our residents. And while tourists are here, they're residents."
Vickers warned that Pinellas County was fortunate to escape major damage despite the record number of storms. And he urged hotel and motel owners to reassess their disaster plans.
"I cringe at the thought of hotels that expect to evacuate their guest to shelters," he said. "If the shelters had been full, then what would the hotel owners do?"
As it was, public shelters were less than 10 percent full during Hurricane Charley, leading Vickers to assume that many people ignored the county's evacuation order. He acknowledged there was little hotel owners could do if guests refused to leave.
"You can give them toe tags and ask how to contact next of kin," he said. "If Charley had continued on its projected course, the body count would have been high."
Byron Bass, general manager of Progress Energy, explained his decision to shut off power to parts of the county's beaches as Charley approached, a decision widely unpopular with hotel owners. Faced with the possibility of storm surges flooding up to five power plants on Florida's West Coast, Bass said he had no choice but to reduce the power load in preparation for shutting down the plants.
"You can't bring these plants down in a hurry," he said.
Keith Overton, vice president of TradeWinds Island Resort, said his 794-room property on St. Pete Beach weathered the storm well, despite minor water damage and the loss of about $2-million in business. The property was able to evacuate most guests to Orlando during Charley and had about 70 percent occupancy with storm refugees during the next three storms. Nor was Overton too upset about the handful of guests who insisted on hanging around despite the evacuation order during Charley.
"They had been partying pretty hard," he said. "It was probably better that they stayed there and slept it off."
Kris Hundley can be reached at hundley@sptimes.com or 727 892-2996.