Merchants, officials look to Hard Rock for more tourists

By Michelle Carolla
WBTW News 13
Published: April 16, 2008

With the new Market Common shopping complex and Hard Rock Park, businesses are waiting to see if they will bring in new visitors.

During the peak season, nearly a half million people visit the Grand Strand. For the past few years, those numbers dropped. Match lower numbers with overdevelopment and that translates to needing a lot more visitors to fill the empty rooms.

So, how will hard rock help in building the local economy? A group from upstate New York visits Myrtle Beach often, and they’re happy there’s something new to do.

“There’s just like the beach and shopping so there’s not really something like this so it’s different and it seems cool,” said Maria Pietro of Amsterdam, NY.

Steven Goodwin, CEO of Hard Rock Park said the positive effects are already taking place. “We’re already doing something for this area,” said Goodwin. “We’ve hired 2200 people as of this week. We’re still hiring. We’ll probably hire over 3000 by the time we’re finished.“

Goodwin said they’ve also contracted with several suppliers that increased their staff to meet the demands. He said they all spend their money in the community, creating a trickle down effect.

Brad Dean, President of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, believes the attractions in the area will help boost the local economy, even in tough economic times.

“We’ve seen a couple of years of flat tourism revenues and actually the last two years, although we’ve seen incremental growth in tourism, it really hasn’t been from increases in numbers, but rather increases in expenditures,” said Dean. “In a down year, we’re really counting on more visitors to come to the area.“

Dean said nearly 14-million visitors vacation along the Grand Strand each year. He hopes the new park will add millions more.

The park launched a marketing campaign across the Mid-Atlantic states and in the Northeast. Hard Rock Park sent their mascot Winston the Bulldog to Columbia Tuesday to present each state senator a specially designed Hard Rock Park pin and a letter from Goodwin, asking them to not cut the tourism budget.

Last year, the Grand Strand area received 5 million dollars of the 26 million dollars allocated to market South Carolina. The senate is proposing to completely cut out all the marketing dollars.