Labor Day signals summer’s last hurrah for Anna Maria Island.
And the fall cornucopia likely will be full — but not overflowing — this year.
Barring inclement weather, tourism experts and island business owners expect a busy Labor Day weekend reminiscent of the 2021 holiday.
But signs point to a dip from 2021 levels in tourism and sales volumes.
While the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau invests heavily in marketing the island to tourists during traditionally slow months in the late summer and fall, the agency does not dedicate its resources to drawing visitors to the area for the Labor Day weekend.
“It’s already busy enough,” BACVB executive director Elliott Falcione said Aug. 22. “The three major summer holidays are pretty status quo — lot of drive market, a lot of people coming on the island for the day.”
To fill their properties, rental agencies are utilizing the same strategy they employed for the July Fourth weekend: reducing lengths of stays from one week or more to a few days.
Duncan Real Estate vacation rental manager Sybille Petereit said Aug. 24 that she expects 80% of the outfit’s short-term rentals to be booked for the Sept. 3-5 weekend.
However, daily rentals — which are not permitted in Holmes Beach except in the motel zone — represent less than half of the company’s offerings and Petereit said about 40% of Duncan’s portfolio is booked for the month of September, a figure on par with pre-pandemic levels.
Petereit said rental volume has fallen because island agencies are no longer benefitting from the demand created in 2020 and 2021 by Florida’s lax pandemic restrictions and international travelers.
Heading into the fall, Duncan’s booking volume is 15% behind 2021 metrics.
Couples represent more of Duncan’s Labor Day weekend bookings than families.
“Multiple nights, I think that’s more of a driving destination from people that are in-state, but not so many families,” Petereit said. “I think families will come mostly from short driving distances for day trips to the island.”
Island Real Estate owner Larry Chatt said Aug. 24 that his agency’s portfolio is about 80% booked Labor Day week, compared to about 65%-70% for many other island rental outfits.
He attributed the agency’s above-average bookings to the strong reputation the company built during the pandemic and said most Labor Day weekend renters are families from Florida driving six hours or less from their homes to the island.
Due to global vacation market normalization, Chatt anticipates the peaks and troughs of the fall rental volume will mirror a pre-pandemic pattern, rather than the soaring highs island agencies experienced in traditionally slow months in 2020 and 2021.
Once again, October rental volume should be double that of September and November, a trend that was upside down in 2021.
Typically, European visitors bolster the October market and Chatt expects at least some to return to the area this year.
The worm also has turned for rental rates at many island properties, he said.
“Rates are extremely sensitive. They have been for the latter half of the summer, including Labor Day,” Chatt said. “So, with the rest of the world opening up for visitation, we’ve definitely seen a degradation of rates.”
“I don’t have the exact figures but the reductions are in the double digits, maybe even as high as 20%,” he said. “The rates we had all summer for 2021 were astonishing. We had some of that for early summer 2022 but, as the summer went on, visitors had more choices.”
Chatt said rates likely will remain stable in the fall despite inflationary pressure and that the reduction in rates was a “healthy correction.”
“We’re no longer competing against Hawaii and Bora Bora and that wasn’t something we could sustain,” he said.
As the fall wears on, the number of island visitors from Florida will diminish compared to out-of-state tourists, who fly to the area for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, Chatt said.
The island motel market for Labor Day weekend and fall appears to be faring better than the rental property sector.
Silver Resorts, Bradenton Beach, general manager/owner Angela Rodocker wrote in an Aug. 22 email to The Islander that booking volume for the holiday weekend is like 2021.
And while her Silver Surf Gulf Beach Resort location will be closed for renovation this fall, the company’s Bridgewalk Landmark Resort has booking levels “up over last year every month out to March for advance bookings by 20%.”
About 83% of the resort’s Labor Day weekend guests will hail from Florida and the Southeastern United States, she said.
In the fall, Rodocker expects 55% of Bridgewalk guests to be Midwest or Northeast U.S. residents.
Rodocker said she has no plan to reduce rates.
Restaurants
Island restaurant owners expect a Labor Day weekend comparable to 2021.
The Feast Restaurant owner Chris Dale said he expects sales volume to be as good or better than the 2021 holiday at his Holmes Beach eatery.
His staff continues to become more efficient with takeout orders, a dining option that became popular during the pandemic, and Dale said Aug. 25 he anticipates a mixture of couples, families and larger groups will dine at his American continental restaurant in greater numbers as society learns to live with COVID-19.
In terms of customer volume at Bradenton Beach’s Blue Marlin Seafood Restaurant Sept. 3-5, owner Adam Ellis expects a typical late-summer weekend.
“It’s usually a pretty good weekend for the beach and barbecues but as far as the restaurants go, it’s probably just going to be a normal weekend,” he said Aug. 23.
Ellis scours rental bookings data to forecast business volume and, based on his analysis, expects a holiday weekend on par with 2021, a slightly above-average year.
Pizza Social owner Andrew Simonetti expects a 20% uptick in sales volume Sept. 3-4 compared to last year but he plans to close on Labor Day.
Simonetti and Dale are bullish on the fall, while Ellis predicts stable sales volume or a slight drop as the tourism market continues to normalize.
The restaurant owners expect pandemic-era labor shortages and fluctuating food prices will continue to impact the industry through the fall.
The owners said food prices are still wildly fluctuating, a trend Dale expects to continue for at least a year.
Retail
Barb Jaeger, owner of the White Egret family of stores in Holmes Beach and Anna Maria, and Jennifer Francis, assistant manager of Holmes Beach’s Sun and Surf Beach Shop, are optimistic about retail sales Labor Day weekend and in the fall.
After a mediocre summer, Jaeger said she is looking forward to the holiday, when she anticipates customers will return to her furnishing stores.
“Tourism is a good thing to have but where you make it is with your regulars,” she said Aug. 24. “When they have their guests in and they stop in.”
Labor Day weekend sales were so high in 2021 they surprised Sun and Surf staff, Francis said. She expects numbers this year to remain high and, she said Aug. 25, she expects a similar pattern for the fall.
The shop caters to visitors and top-sellers year-round include Anna Maria Island T-shirts, Life is Good brand items and supplies for the sand and surf, such as swim goggles and boogie boards.
Charter
Capt. Jason Stock, owner of Anna Maria Island Fishing Charters, said Aug. 24 he expects to be fully booked Labor Day weekend with fishing charters and through the fall on the back of a Tampa-area clientele he’s built word-of-mouth.
His three-boat fleet will target gag grouper, mangrove snapper, tuna, cobia, wahoo, mahi-mahi and the occasional sailfish over the Labor Day weekend.
In the fall, his captains will focus more heavily on hooking kingfish, tuna, wahoo and cobia.