This year could set another record for tourism revenue in South Carolina, state Parks Recreation and Tourism director Duane Parrish told members of the North Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce on Friday morning, with all visitor-oriented business engines firing at full throttle.
Except one.
“Golf is struggling,” Parrish said.
While the other segments of the state’s tourism industry have seen significant growth since the Great Recession, golf is headed the other way, Parrish said.
That loss is a particular blow to the Grand Strand, which has seen the number of area courses decimated in recent years and a drop in an off-season revenue stream — winter golfers — it had counted on for years.
The decline of the tax revenues from golfers is vexing to county government, as it already is struggling to keep up with the need to expand services as new residents pour into the Strand, Horry County Council chairman Mark Lazarus said after Parrish’s talk.
“We’ve got to rely on more sources,” Lazarus said. “The more people move here, the more demand for services.”
Taxes on new home construction doesn’t bring in the expanded revenue needed when the new residents arrive, he said. The county is looking at imposing an impact fee to help with the costs, but Lazarus clearly would like more than one iron in one fire.
Revenues from the area’s burgeoning sports tourism industry can help as well, and the recent opening of the Myrtle Beach Sports Complex brings a venue to attract large groups even when the weather turns icy.
North Myrtle Beach is aiming to lure visitors from the group meeting market, a segment that likes to schedule functions at times when area hotels find themselves with too many rooms to fill.
“It’s a huge business,” said George DuRant, the North Myrtle Beach Chamber’s vice president of tourism development. “They stay multiple nights. They spend quite a bit of money.”
The city hired Melissa Overbey last month as its new group sales and sports tourism manager, adding the group sales responsibility to a job that formerly had focused solely on sports tourism.
DuRant said the city is aiming at groups in what he calls the SMERF market, an acronym for social, military, educational, reunion and fraternal groups.
“Typically, they come from Sunday to Thursday and in the off season,” he said.
If that business takes off like the sports tourism market has on the Grand Strand, it like sports tourism can help to replace funds that governments previously might have seen from golf.
Tourism had a $18.1 billion economic impact statewide in 2013, the latest year for which figures are available, Parrish said. The taxes paid by tourists — accommodations, sales, gas etc. — added $1.3 billion to state and local revenues.
One in 10 jobs statewide is generated by tourism, a number Parrish conceded is higher along the Grand Strand.
Gas prices have gone up and are expected to continue on that trend through July 4. But then it is forecast to head back down, which Parrish said bodes well for fall tourism, a niche that the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce has been working to open with impressive results.
And while the golf segment has been pummeled in recent years, Parrish said the situation is not hopeless.
“There’s still a market out there,” he said. “What we’ve got to do is take share from other states.”
Contact STEVE JONES at 444-1765 or on Twitter @TSN_SteveJones.
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