Our intention with this COMPASS eNEWS is to help the
organization sort through the good
and bad news of the day, refresh your research button, bring perspective and encourage destination marketing best practices.
Correlating with last weekend's Geitner and Greenspan commentary: “the US
climbing its way out of recession”
and “we’re getting very close to
seeing the end of the
recession, we offer up the
following observations for those
with capital investments in the
Carolinas.
See
what
Hilton Head Monthly says
about CarolinaLiving.com research
as a tool for economic
development. At the near peak in 2007, we forecasted 470,000 men, women and children gross in-migrants to the Carolinas. Maybe a bit rich. But it’s nearly impossible for the US Census to keep up in the short term.
Hotel occupancy is off 8-10 points and ADR (average daily rate) is way soft. The in-migration numbers have dropped in the range of 40%,
and second home transactions more like 65% off, for all the reasons we know*.
However, current indicators seem positive:
•
Last minute rental and resort reservations have buoyed up and most summer weekends are in the 95% occupancy range. Tourism destinations like Charleston, Myrtle Beach and Currituck are rolling out aggressive media to grow market share.
•
CarolinaLiving.com inquiry “registrations,” seven months into 2009, put us on track for 4,000
for the year - a 5% increase over 2008.
•
National Change Of Address Audits on our registered data bank report CarolinaLiving.com systems moved 652 families into the Carolinas during the 10 months ending 4/30/09, up on average by 10%
(from 59 to 65 a month from the previous period)
while down from the peak monthly average of 122 in 2007. We know: 25% are over age 50; Median HHI is $119,000; 77% have college degrees; NC receives twice the SC counts.
