Researchers: Hilton Head tourism industry pulling out of tailspin

Tourism, one of the Lowcountry's primary industries, is recovering from the recession, a trio of tourism researchers said Wednesday at the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce.

The speakers during the chamber's "Destination Travel & Lodging Deep Dive" expressed cautious optimism but said hoteliers and others in the travel business will need to adjust to a changing marketplace to sustain the recovery.

"The tourists are coming back," said Simon Hudson, endowed chair at the University of South Carolina's Center of Economic Excellence in Tourism and Economic Development.

Local businesses should be able to capitalize on that rebound as long as they satisfy travelers' demands for such things as educational and volunteer experiences, convenience and topnotch service, Hudson said.

Ralf Garrison, principal of travel marketing services firm Advisory Group of Denver, said consumer confidence levels are becoming steady but remain well below pre-recession levels.

"The recovery we've seen so far is not giving consumers enough tangible feelings of comfort to be spending discretionary dollars -- not yet anyway," he said.

Garrison, who is helping the chamber track home and villa rental data, said demand in that sector is improving, although not enough to allow owners to raise rates again.

In the hotel sector, occupancy is growing again nationally, but rates continue to lag, said Vail Brown, vice president of global sales and marketing at Smith Travel Research, a Tennessee firm that tracks hotel statistics for the chamber.

The hotel business hasn't reached the end of the recession, but "we feel like we're getting really darn close," Brown said.