September Bed Tax Numbers up 7% Year Over Year

Looking at the bed tax revenue numbers for August, September’s had been released at the beginning of the month! It’s always super insightful to see where September falls as for many, it’s the last big hooray for the summer tourism season. For many still, October proves a strong month as fall tourism is popular at the beach before November and December drop sharply.

This September didn’t feel as frenzied with the lack of TDC planned events like we had last year, but at Panama City Beach Luxury Properties, we were still sold out each weekend through the month. In addition, most of our larger properties enjoyed strong weekly rentals through the entire month.

For the industry, bed tax revenue collections were over 7% up for September 2012 over September 2011 and rang in at a total of $999,168.09

A close look at the numbers.

September 2012 – $999,168.09 – single point: $199,833.62 – 7.65% up over previous year
September 2011 – $928,161.56 – single point: $185,632.31 – 16.7% up over previous year
September 2010 – $795,301.87 – single point: $159,060.37 – 0.0% neutral over previous year (oil spill year)
September 2009 – $795,698.44 – single point: $159,139.69 – 2.1% up over previous year
September 2008 – $467,386.73 – single point: $155,795.58 – 17.7% up over previous year
September 2007 – $397,000.56 – single point: $132,333.52

When considering gains, it’s always fun to look at where we are in comparison to where we were a few years ago. For example, before the oil spill, many considered the 2008 summer tourism season a good baseline for strong tourism. When compared to that year, 2012 is 25.6% up.

Industry wide in Bay County for September 2012, $19,983,361.80 was generated in reported room-night revenue.

The numbers from the previous months this year

August 2012 – $3,007,148.42 – up 1.52% over previous year
July 2012 – $3,007,148.42 – up 1.52% over previous year
June 2012 – $2,737,780.66 – up 19.88% over previous year
May 2012 – $1,408,512 – up 24.95% over previous year
April 2012 – $1,270,835.84 – up 4.45% over previous year
March 2012 – $1,769,821.69 – up 19.38% over previous year

August Bed Tax Numbers up 15% Year Over Year

Having just realized that I never did a bed tax revenue report for August, I wanted to get this out real quick. August this year seemed strong in our own vacation rental business and that seems to be confirmed with the huge increase in total revenue year over year for the month, in Panama City Beach.

Just a look at perspective, for 2011 we averaged $1524 of total revenue per property for the month here at Panama City Beach Luxury Properties and for 2012 we averaged $3614 of total revenue per property for the month – which as you can see is a 137% increase. Of course, the fact that we have several more higher income properties this year over last year ways heavily on this. 🙂

For the industry, bed tax revenue collections were over 15% up for August 2012 over August 2011 and rang in at a total of $1,253,350.77

A close look at the numbers.

August 2012 – $1,253,350.77 – single point: $250,670.15 – 15.35% up over previous year
August 2011 – $1,086,541.59 – single point: $217,308.32 – 34.5% up over previous year
August 2010 – $807,936.59 – single point: $161,587.32 – 14.7% DOWN over previous year
August 2009 – $807,936.59 – single point: $189,519.23 – 2.5% up over previous year
August 2008 – $554,578.90 – single point: $184,859.63 – 4.2% up over previous year
August 2007 – $532,047.94 – single point: $177,349.31

Industry wide in Bay County for August 2012, $25,067,015.40 was generated in reported room-night revenue.

The numbers from the previous months this year

July 2012 – $3,007,148.42 – up 1.52% over previous year
June 2012 – $2,737,780.66 – up 19.88% over previous year
May 2012 – $1,408,512 – up 24.95% over previous year
April 2012 – $1,270,835.84 – up 4.45% over previous year
March 2012 – $1,769,821.69 – up 19.38% over previous year

July Bed Tax Revenue Numbers UP 1.59% over 2011

Summer’s almost over and July was another banner bed tax revenue month. April, May and June were record breaking months and July just barely cinched an improvement coming in at 1.59% over last year’s numbers.

A close look at the numbers.

July 2012 – $3,009,385.67 – single point: $601,877.13 – 1.59% up over previous year
July 2011 – $2,962,268.09 – single point: $592,453.62 – 50.6% up over previous year
July 2010 – $1,967,020.33 – single point: $393,404.07 – -14.6% up over previous year
July 2009 – $2,302,863.86 – single point: $460,572.77 – 2.7% up over previous year
July 2008 – $1,345,540.63 – single point: $448,513.54 – -3.2% up over previous year
July 2007 – $1,389,711.37 – single point: $463,237.12

Industry wide in Bay County for July 2012, $60,187,713.40 was generated in room-night revenue.

The numbers from the previous months this year

June 2012 – $2,737,780.66 – up 19.88% over previous year
May 2012 – $1,408,512 – up 24.95% over previous year
April 2012 – $1,270,835.84 – up 4.45% over previous year
March 2012 – $1,769,821.69 – up 19.38% over previous year

June Tourism up 19.9%

There’s been a lot of talk about bed tax lately, primarily because it is a good barometer of where the tourism market is. May’s numbers were up just under 25%, and if you remember, at the beginning of the season, I predicted (conservatively) that we would see an average of around $2 million per month for the May to August reporting period. We’ll discuss where we are with that in a few.

June 2012’s bed tax collection was $2,737,780.66, or an astounding 19.9% increase over June 2011.

A close look at the numbers.

June 2012 – $2,737,780.66 – single point: $373,055.95 – 19.88% up over previous year
June 2011 – $2,283,706.72 – single point: $407,766.53 – 21.2% up over previous year
June 2010 – $1,884,269.21 – single point: $389,286.91 – -3.2% down from previous year
June 2009 – $1,946,434.54 – single point: $376,853.84 – -4.5% down from previous year
June 2008 – $1,223,299.60 – single point: $456,741.34 – 9.3% up over previous year
June 2007 – $1,119,167.86 – single point: $547,556.13

When considering the percentage of the bed tax, and doing a little reverse engineering, industry wide in Bay County, $54,755,613.20 was generated in room-night revenue. That’s a lot of money spread around for one month.

The numbers from the previous months this year

May 2012 – $1,408,512 – up 24.95% over previous year
April 2012 – $1,270,835.84 – up 4.45% over previous year
March 2012 – $1,769,821.69 – up 19.38% over previous year

Predictions for July

While June was a little bit of a slow start for us at Panama City Beach Luxury Properties at 83% occupancy average across all our properties, July we had an average occupancy of 97% across the board. Of course, looking at our average revenue per unit for July wouldn’t be fair, compared to July 2011 since we have a much higher concentration of higher-revenue properties this summer over last, but the number is fun anyways: $4290.17 per unit, which is 25% up over last year ($3424.91 average per unit).

Looking at the average percentage increases for the previous months (17.17%), and throwing in a little personal intuition, I think July will see a 23% increase in 2012 over 2011.

As far as our predicted average increase per month across the entire reporting season of May to August, right now we’re averaging $2,073,146.33, or .7% better than what I had predicted. Not too shabby, if I don’t say so myself. 🙂

Record Breaking Tourism Month for May

Summer tourism is off to an explosive start with May’s bed tax revenue numbers literally smashing the mild record that was set last year. Total collections for May of 2012 were $1,409,032.20, whereas the total collections for May of 2011 were $1,127,340.30. This equals a 24.99% increase and provides the local tourism industry clear support for another record breaking summer.

Bed Tax, or officially known as the Bay County Tourist Development Tax, is a tax on revenue generated from tourism accommodations rentals.

Read here to learn more about the Bed Tax.

Let’s look at the numbers.

May of 2011 was a weird month. Many had high expectations, yet many others were very leery as we were still distancing ourselves from the devastating impact that the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill left us with in the tourism season of 2010. Tourism numbers were up last year (2011) over the year before (2010), but only slightly (4.8%).

For May of 2012 (this May), everyone’s hopes were high, but expectations weren’t, necessarily, since April had been such a lackluster month (seeing a paltry 4.45% gain 2012 over 2011).

But, putting all speculation aside, May turned out to be phenomenal and we have the numbers to prove it.

May of 2009: $998,779.40
May of 2010: $1,075,882.69 (7.7% gain)
May of 2011: $1,127,340.30 (4.8% gain)
May of 2012: $1,409,032.20 (24.99% gain)

The numbers from Panama City Beach Luxury Properties

Being in the tourism business, I have the great luxury and benefit to have a real picture of what we are seeing. Now, grant it, occupancy stems from a variety of factors that carefully work together, including type of rental, marketing acumen, exposure and environmental circumstances.

Since we’ve experienced dramatic growth over the last 18 months, looking at raw numbers year over year would be misleading. So obviously we’d need to do a unit by unit average. And I’m not sure if it’s considered social acceptable or even ostentatious to disclose how many total vacation homes we manage, so I’ll just leave that number out. But, if you were really curious, you could always just go to our vacation rental website and count them. 😉

Please note: these numbers are an average across the board, and include properties that may or may not perform equally during all tourism periods.

May of 2011

Total average: $843.30
Highest performing unit: $2928
Lowest performing unit: $182

May of 2012

Total average: $1779.87
Highest performing unit: $5,233.75
Lowest performing unit: $603.09

Looking at our average revenue per unit, we had an astounding 111.06% increase in our average revenue generated per unit.

Again, this representation is extremely skewed, especially looking at the variety of rental units we host this year compared to last year. We have a large number of high-revenue properties because our flat rate management fee ($397 per month) lends itself very good to those owners (saves tons of money).

June’s bed tax revenue numbers should be out the first week in August, so expect to see some really fun numbers then as well.

Bed Tax Revenue Soars in March

Tourism traffic was definitely up in March of this year as indicated by the latest bed tax revenue monthly report. Year over year, March of this year was an astounding 19.4% up over last year. Looking closer reveals an even more astounding 38% increase over 2009, our last “low” point over the last 6 years. In Bay County there is a tax collected on each vacation rental revenue dollar that is calculated as 5% of the total base rent rate of each stay. This Bed Tax money is then appropriated to a variety of efforts to fund the general tourism marketing of our area. Some funds marketing, some funds operational costs of handling the marketing operations, some funds renourshing our beach, etc.

A close look at the numbers.

With the oil spill a couple years ago, there was a lot of uncertainty as to what direction our local tourism industry was going to go. Last year (2011 season) being the first year out of that catastrophe, and seeing a 3.7% decrease in year over year bed tax collections, many were heavily concerned with how the 2011 summer would fare. Of course, we know, summer 2011 was a record breaking season, so those fears fortunately, were unfounded. Total Bed Tax dollars collected for March of 2012 were $1,769,821.69. This is 5% total of all the room-night revenue reported. Broken down by single percentage, this would be $353,964.34 per point collected. The total bed tax revenue collected for March of 2011 was $1,482,498.95. Again, broken down by single percentage, this would be $296,499.79. In doing year over year increase calculations, it’s important to break down the total revenue collected by single percentage because beginning in the 2008/2009 tourism season, 5% was collected but before it was 3%. Here is the total breakdown for March for all previous years back to 2007.

March 2010 – $1,539,121.49 – single point: $307,824.30 – 19.9% over previous year
March 2009 – $1,026,521.85 – single point: $256,630.46 – -5.3% down previous year
March 2008 – $813,079.54 – single point: $271,026.51 – 16.3% over previous year
March 2007 – $699,028.94 – single point: $233,009.65

Projections for April 2012

We’ve already offered our general prediction over the average increase projections for tourism season 2012. March 2012 bed tax revenue numbers were amazing, and if that’s any indication of what we’ll see for April, then we’re on a fast track to an amazing tourism season for this summer. I can speak for my own vacation rental company (PCBLP) in that April was certainly record breaking. We had a much better April than we did last year, but it’s difficult for me to tabulate the source as we were just getting rolling last April. Looking at average increases for April bed tax revenue over the last 6 years, we should see a minimum of 7% increase this year over last year. But I’m betting on a more dramatic increase that is founded on what we’ve seen the last 3 years, which would be a healthy 15.4%. I’m projecting our 2012 April bed tax collections to be $1,404,017.44 – give or take 3%. I love making predictions. We’ll see how close I get!

July Tourism UP 50% Over Last Year

July tourism numbers are up 50.84% over July 2010. The bed tax revenue numbers just came in and they confirm what we all knew already. This summer was the busiest tourism summer Panama City Beach has ever seen.

True, the 50% compares to last year, a tourism season that was dramatically down due to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill that devastated local businesses. But, when comparing July of 2011’s numbers to July of 2009 – we’re still an astounding 29% up!

The numbers

These numbers are derived from actual bed tax collections. Each transient short-term rental is required to register with the local bed taxing authority and pay a 5% tax on all accommodations. The 1st, 2nd and 4th are proportioned for promotion of the beach (it funds the TDC). The 3rd is only for beach renourishment and the 5th was directly tied to bringing a low-cost carrier to Panama City Beach and expires April 2014.

July 2009 – 2,302,863.86

July 2010 – 1,967,020.33

July 2011 – 2,966,961.49

July accommodations

This past July, many beach accommodations reported a completely sold out inventory. Many calls up and down the beach netted no vacancies. Many speculate that this summer’s growth was indicative of a large pent-up demand for our area that stemmed from last year’s environmental disaster. Other’s state that we’re just making up for lost ground. Either way, we’re still expecting to see growth next year, but more along the lines of a normal 10 to 15% growth in bed tax collections.

August Bed Tax Numbers CRUSHED, Worse than July

Like igniting gun powder on an open wound, August’s bed tax collection numbers were a piercing pain in an open wound. We talked about last month that July’s bed tax collection numbers were down 14.58% total, including the normal first three cents combined with the additional 4th and 5th cent. As if that wasn’t bad enough, August’s numbers were just released and rang in at 14.74% down over August of 2009. Remember, this number is a comparison of year over year and fails to take into consideration the potential for increase as a result of normal growth and the explosion we were expecting this summer with the opening of the new airport and millions of extra marketing dollars being pumped into this area.

Continue reading “August Bed Tax Numbers CRUSHED, Worse than July” →

July Tourism Devastated in Panama City Beach

In what was supposed to be the best July we’ve ever experienced in Panama City Beach, threat of oil-covered sand and fear of ruined vacations kept visitor’s away. This summer was supposed to be the beginning of a new era in Panama City Beach tourism growth with high expectations from the performance of the new airport and the millions of dollars of extra marketing money that was being pumped into the awareness of our area. Local officials, organizations and industry leaders had literally been working up to this summer for years in anticipation of record breaking numbers; and it was all crushed by what some would call a series of blatant mistakes that could have easily been avoided.

Continue reading “July Tourism Devastated in Panama City Beach” →

Oil Spill Barely Hurts June Bed Tax Collections

Despite a very dismal looking outlook at the beginning of the summer, the actual numbers for June are showing nearly even bed tax collections this year, compared to last year. In June, a total of $1,88,269.21 was collected. This compares to $1,946,037.92 in tax revenue that was collected in June of 2009. The actual variance is just over $61,000, or -3.17%.

This was an interesting summer, we had tons of things lined up to all but guarantee the best summer tourist season we’ve had in years. Ironically, right before the season began, there was what some may call a monstrous accident just a few short hundred miles away. After a summer of weekly and even daily threats, the damaged perception left our local industry practically starving for business and pleading with their customers to keep their reservations. The rental climate changed from one of knowing how the numbers were going to be all summer before Memorial Day, to guessing what the next week would hold for rental revenue. Shops and restaurants had no idea what to expect, but were bracing for the worst. Talking to retailers and resorts, numbers were way off this year. Obviously some fared better than others, but overall most suffered to some degree.

But lets get back to the bed tax numbers. The numbers were only down 3.17% this year. That doesn’t seem all bad, right? Well, you have to consider that a deficit of any amount is going to spread hurt across the board. You have to consider that with any new additions to the rental or retail inventory, plus some businesses ability to reach their customers over other businesses, that 3.17% can mean quite a different story for different people.

All in all, I think we are blessed to have done as well as we did, in Panama City Beach, despite the looming threat that impaled the perception of our beach this summer. Hopefully next year no outside forces will impede all the work that has been put into increasing our local tourism business.

July’s numbers should be out within the week, which will be the real test to see how the summer really fared. Stay tuned!