Manatee County’s tourism promoters, seeking to shift perspectives from gloom to bloom, delivered a bright outlook for spring.
Meeting Feb. 24 at Bradenton City Hall, the tourist development council heard reports on marketing and airport operations indicating the area could experience a record-breaking spring season just six months after twin disasters.
“We expect to have a really quick rebound, with record-breaking numbers for the month of March … Probably our highest passenger numbers in the history of the airport,” Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport executive vice president Mark Stuckey told the council, which serves as an advisory board to the county commission, including providing recommendations on spending tourist development tax dollars.
Stuckey said SRQ probably will see passenger numbers rise in April “and every month beyond.”
From the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, marketing and communications director Kolby Grayson told the TDC, “You can start to see the recovery start to happen. And now we are really starting to see things get truly back to normal, probably in April.”
The bright outlook follows a post-disaster slump associated with Hurricane Helene in September 2024 and then Hurricane Milton in October.
SRQ, for example, suffered storm damage, including the loss of a concourse roof, and closed temporarily.
“We lost over 100,000 seats and 600 flights in just one week,” Stuckey said. He added that carriers cut back on service following the storms.
January, he said, was down in terms of passenger traffic but February was up, as are bookings into the summer.
Grayson looked back to the fall, to the devastation caused by the storms and also the fallout, the damage to the area’s reputation as an idyllic destination.
Grayson recalled the challenge of responding to travelers cancelling not just vacations last fall but wanting to cancel bookings this spring despite “monumental efforts to restore our beaches.”
The BACVB, she said, needed to get out the word — and images — that the area was coming back, that businesses were reopening, that “the water got bluer, the sand got wider … that we were in an active state of recovery and were putting the pieces back together.”
In other business during the meeting, the TDC voted to recommend county commissioners allocate $1.25 million for the new Art Center Manatee in Bradenton, $1 million per year for three years to bring the Senior PGA championship to the area, $570,000 for the expansion of the Gulf Islands Ferry service and $75,000 for the Hernando de Soto Historical Society Grand Parade in April.
The council includes hoteliers Jiten Patel, Rahul Patel, Eric Cairns and Tony DeRusso, interested citizens Norma Kennedy and Dave Wick, Bradenton Mayor Gene Brown, Holmes Beach Commissioner Dan Diggins and county Commissioner Amanda Ballard, who serves as chair.
The council’s next meeting will be at 9 a.m. Monday, April 21, at the county administration building, 1112 Manatee Ave. W., Bradenton.