NAPLES, Fla. — "Season" is quickly approaching here in Southwest Florida and some rental properties like the Silver Sands Resort on Fort Myers Beach say they expect good business.
“I’m looking at coming up in the end of October, you know Halloween is pretty good, November is a little slow because of cancellations and what now but as far as season goes I think we're going to have a pretty good season. God willing if we don’t have another hit with COVID,” said Andrea Carriere, owner of the Silver Sands Resort.
Andrea Carriere owner of the Silver Sands Resort says despite her high hopes, she does have some concerns and is preparing.
“I have some Canadian guests that come for 2 months and I don’t know if they are going to be able to come, if they are going to be be able to get back, if their health insurance will come with them and those are some big big money stays. You know I don’t know if there are going to be guests that didn’t have a room that day and thought they’d stay an extra day, you know to kind of fill in the blanks,” said Carriere.
In Collier County, Jack Wert with the county tourism bureau says season residents have started heading back a bit early this year, but he’s curious to see how the short term visitor numbers will look come season.
“We’re beginning to see some more traffic with out of state license plates that type of thing. We’re beginning to see more and more of them driving rather than flying. We’ve already seen on weekends some good traffic some good increases visitor numbers, primarily from other parts of Florida, and that’s helped drive some business and bring some people back to work here in the community,” said Jack Wert, Executive Director of the Collier County Tourism Bureau.
Wert tells me research shows Collier County is expected to have a good season as long as visitors continue to feel safe traveling to the sunshine state during the pandemic.
“We’re hearing first of all from our hotels that not a lot of advanced reservations, it is last minute. Our weekends have done very well, we’re actually up just a little bit where we were a year ago in terms of occupancy. So coming out of September which is our slowest month of the year was actually a little bit above where it was last year,” said Wert.
