LAURA RUANE, The News-Press6:02 p.m. EDT September 1, 2016
Face it: September always is a hot mess for Southwest Florida’s lifeblood tourism and hospitality industry.
This one is shaping up to be no different, with Hurricane Hermine set to barrel onto the state’s Big Bend area late Thursday or early Friday.
Still, visitors are coming for the holiday weekend. By midweek, coastal hotels were close to sold out for Saturday and Sunday.
On Tuesday The Inn on Fifth in downtown Naples saw more cancellations than reservations, but as Hermine tracked to the north, those cancellations were replaced with new reservations for the long weekend, owner Phil McCabe said.
"This is actually one of our slowest weeks of the year, until Labor Day weekend," he said. "Then we look forward to a full Labor Day weekend."
Lodging operators and other business leaders see the glass as at least half-full. They say coastal water quality questions and foreign currency wobbles from Brexit haven’t made this summer as big a bummer as it could have been, so they're grateful.
The rest of September? Manageable, barring a nearby hurricane or a beach closing because the water is unsafe.
Earlier this summer, 44.3 percent of lodging managers in Collier County reported their reservations for August, September and October were stronger than a year ago. A little over 23 percent said bookings for those months were down year-over-year, compared with 10 percent last year.
Southwest Florida businesses often carve out time in September for repairs and upgrades, and to coax budget-minded in-state travelers here with discounts. The Hilton Marco Island Beach Resort & Spa is in the midst of a $40 million overhaul and isn't expected to reopen until October, ahead of the busy winter season.
Later in the month, corporate travel will start to pick up.
The Naples-Marco Island area should get a visitor bump from an announcement this week that Travel + Leisure magazine named Naples No. 3 on its list of “Favorite Beach Towns In America” and No. 27 on the list of “America’s Favorite Towns." The magazine's editors noted the “tiny resort town on the Gulf Coast has long been a favorite destination for the jetsetters that prefer quiet relaxation over the glitzy see-and-be-seen parties of Miami.” Naples was the highest rated Florida city on the beach towns list.
All that being said, most businesses are happy to get past the month at least one wag nicknamed “Death-Tember.”
Tourists and locals take in the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico from the beach on Aug. 11, 2016, in Naples. The Southwest Florida tourism industry could face some negative effects in the face of a couple of months of tough press, with concerns such as Zika, algae and shootings occurring in our area. (Photo: Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News)
“September is the toughest month to get through,” said Grant Phelan, operations director for Texas Tony's BBQ and the Pincher's seafood restaurant group with locations throughout Lee and Collier counties as well as in Tampa, Sarasota and Key West.
Phelan expects a big burst of business this weekend and then “Tuesday it gets real quiet – and stays quiet.”
He’ll continue to operate with more staff than he needs, though. Phelan doesn’t want to lose good workers, especially since Oct. 15 will be here before we know it, he said.
Oct. 15 “is the start of the stone crab season,” Phelan said. “That’s when we’ll be busy again."
Labor Day weekend owes its origins to unions and to recognizing the contributions of the American worker. These days, though, workers who aren’t in the service industry typically head for the beaches.
Russ Rosen, owner of the Best Western Naples Inn & Suites, said his hotel is sold out for the weekend, but a search on booking.com on Thursday showed many of the major beachfront hotels in the area still had rooms available, which was unusual.
He blamed some of the softness on the heavy rains. "It's turning a lot of people off, for sure," he said.
He also said parts of the Gulf of Mexico looked murky, including waters near Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park, likely to be another deterrent to visitors.
Fran Myers, co-owner of the Red Coconut RV resort on Estero Island, said: “Everybody’s nervous about the rain. But if it’s not too bad, I think the beach will be bouncing.”
For Estero Island/Fort Myers Beach, Labor Day weekend “is a big holiday, but not as big as Memorial Day weekend or July Fourth,” Myers said.
Her Gulf-front RV campground is booked up for the weekend, “mostly with people from the east coast: Palm Beach down through Miami.”
On Sanibel Island, Sharon Michie at the Cottages to Castles vacation rental agency said summer business was strong for that time of year; however, it tapered off early as more school districts outside Florida began classes — and band camps and the like — by mid-August.
Michie met this week with other property managers. One takeaway: Web traffic is down. “We’re not sure whether it’s because of the Zika virus and the water quality issues.”
Nonetheless, Sanibel and Captiva Islands are so popular, vacation homes and condos already are virtually sold out for February and March, Michie said.
Weather permitting, Labor Day weekend will keep Naples Transportation & Tours busy. It offers guided trolley tours focusing on Collier County’s history, Segway tours of bay, beach and shopping areas, and guided excursions to the Everglades.
“September also is a good corporate travel month,” said Naples Transportation & Tours CEO Randy Smith. “We pick up the business people at the airport, take them out to dinner and arrange for tours."
Smith, who’s also president of the Collier County Lodging & Tourism Alliance, thinks this will be “a fairly typical September."
Some people “have good Septembers; others don’t,” he said. “Often it depends on their business mix.”
Daily News reporter Laura Layden contributed to this story.