Gulf Coast Beach Hotels

Follow the links below to find excellent beach hotels along the Gulf Coast of the US.

Texas

Mississippi

Mississippi Beach Hotels

Alabama

Alabama Beach Hotels
- Orange Beach AL Hotels

Florida

From the category archives:

Gulf Coast Beach Hotels

Gulf oil spill has taken toll on Florida panhandle beach hotels

by admin on October 19, 2010

It probably comes as no surprise that the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico scared many would be visitors away from Gulf Coast beach hotels. We get this from a recent article:

As a result, beachfront hotels reported year-over-year drops in revenue ranging from 12 percent to 29 percent during the high-season months of June, July and August, according to figures compiled by the Santa Rosa Island Authority, which leases the land to hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

“We call it the summer that wasn’t,” said Beverly McCay, whose Holiday Inn Express reported a 27 percent decline in sales.

Pensacola Beach now seems itself again, nearly six months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded and sank, sending oil drifting across the Gulf toward Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. A ribbon of powder-white sand borders crystal-clear water tinted with an assortment of blues and greens.

“September is the first month since the oil that we’ve seen the numbers better than the year before,” said McCay, the Holiday Inn’s general manager. “The bulk of what we’re seeing are leisure travelers who … postponed their visit and came in the fall.”

…

There’s also an ongoing tension between the oil spill’s continuing aftermath and the image that hoteliers want to project as tourists trickle back to the Panhandle.

The beaches are far less smeared with tar balls than they were a few months ago, and the oil that remains is hard to spot and so dried and hardened that it doesn’t leave stains on beachgoers’ shoes or bare feet.

But below the Margaritaville’s balconies on a recent afternoon, three men in green-and-orange safety vests were huddled over a small hole in the beach, retrieving buried bits of oil. A dozen feet away, a young boy splashed in the Gulf’s lazy surf, oblivious to the cleanup work.

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Alabama state-financed beach hotel and convention center being challenged

by admin on October 4, 2010

We of course think that beach hotels are wonderful things. But not everyone in Alabama in thrilled with plans for a new state-financed beach hotel. We get this report from the AP:

Plans for a state-financed hotel and convention center on the Alabama coast are still being legally challenged by a private resort even though the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled against a separate complaint the resort filed.

Bill Baxley, a Birmingham attorney who represents the Perdido Beach Resort, said Monday that two legal avenues were taken seeking to block the Gulf State Park Hotel.

The Alabama Supreme Court shelved one of those challenges Friday when it held that an amended complaint filed with Montgomery Circuit Judge Eugene Reese was properly dismissed by Reese.

But Baxley said a separate lawsuit also has been filed challenging the state’s latest plans for a beach hotel. That suit is now before Montgomery Circuit Judge Tracy McCooey.

The Perdido Beach Resort and others won in March 2009 when Gov. Bob Riley’s initial hotel plan was found to violate state law. A new law passed later last year allowed for revised plans.

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Beach Hotel Business Doing Fine on Gulf Coast

by admin on August 3, 2010

One might expect that the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would be severely hampering business for beach hotels along the gulf coast. But according to recent reports business is doing pretty well:

While I’ve not visited the region yet, from what I’m hearing and reading recently it seems that relatively few of the thousands of miles of beach along the Gulf Coast have been heavily affected and life continues on as usual for most residents and visitors. The Louisiana coast has been hit hardest with multiple beach closures, but as you travel east along Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the impact is minimal, beaches are open and the hotel business is, well booming.

Booming? Yep, at least in terms of occupancy. According the Smith Travel Research (the go-to guys for hotel industry stats) occupancy rates along the coast Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida were up 7 percent in June year-over-year. In coastal Alabama alone, occupancy was up a whopping 41 percent; in Louisiana and Mississippi it was up 10 percent and 11 percent respectively. Florida and Texas experienced smaller increases, but all were up over last June.

Where is this silver lining coming from? To answer that, I called in some experts.

>Troy Rutman, spokesperson for Best Western*, which has hundreds of hotels in the region, said, “While some beach properties have seen declines, the overall short term outlook has been buoyed by corporate business from clean-up crews and news media. We’ve got our eye on the mid- and long-term economic impact of the spill, and we have solutions on deck to assist our members as needs arise.”

>Travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt said, “Many of the hotels had ‘clean beach’ guarantees and stepped up their various advertising/PR efforts. Some may have turned to social media as well to get out the word. The online travel agencies have also promoted the area.” He also pointed out that many hotels in the region are having to “buy business with low rates” which are resulting in “profitless occupancy increases.” (Indeed, a recent Expedia report showed average rates down as much as 30 percent in some areas.)

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