Southerners choose Jersey Shore due to oil in Gulf

WILDWOOD - Most summers, Roy Greenhow and his family drive from their home near Birmingham, Ala., to their favorite vacation spot on the Gulf of Mexico.

But this year, with the worst oil spill in U.S. history fouling gulf beaches, Greenhow aimed the SUV northeast and traveled 16 hours to the Jersey Shore instead.

He feels bad for businesses on the gulf and hopes to return there, but he couldn't risk disappointing his three children on their only vacation of the season, he said.

"The kids want to go to the beach, and we wanted to get away from all that's going on down there. My wife and I needed a break," said Greenhow, 42, an accountant who visited the Shore several times as a child.

The Greenhows usually go to Gulf Shores, Ala. But the state's department of health has warned bathers not to swim in waters off the resort - on what is fondly known as "the redneck Riviera" - because of the oil.

Lured by memories of its amusement-filled boardwalk, Greenhow looked up Wildwood on the Internet. He said he's noticed the license plates and drawls of others from Dixie during his weeklong stay.

Local tourism officials can't provide hard numbers, but cars from Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other states below the Mason-Dixon Line appear to be in greater supply at the Shore this summer.

"I'm hearing a lot more southern accents this year," said Susan Martin, a reservations manager at the Golden Inn in Avalon. "And I just love the sound of it."

There has been an increase in the number of Southerners booking rooms, Martin said. They don't say why they are coming, she said, but many have identified themselves as first-timers.

The newcomers are finding their way largely on their own, say those in the tourism industry. New Jersey this year eliminated its national multimillion-dollar Shore promotional campaign, leaving resort towns complaining even before the gulf disaster about their inability to compete with rivals such as Ocean City, Md.

Diane Wieland, director of the Cape May County Department of Tourism, and her colleagues "feel very bad about what is happening to tourism down in the gulf," she said. "We certainly haven't been going after that southern business per se."

But Cape May County's "Escape to the Jersey Cape" website has seen a nearly 5 percent increase in visits from users in Gulf Coast states this year, she said. There is no way to know if it also has seen an uptick in hits from those who previously vacationed in the gulf region.

The county - which includes Cape May, the Wildwoods, Stone Harbor, Avalon, Sea Isle City and Ocean City - accounts for more than 13 percent of New Jersey's $38 billion in annual tourism revenue. It also has the state's highest concentration of hotels and motels collecting occupancy tax.

Christie Ostrander of the state Department of Travel and Tourism said she had noticed an increase in motorists from the South stopping by the Ocean View Welcome Center on the Garden State Parkway. They ask for information about where to sleep, eat, and play in the region, said Ostrander, who runs the center.

The facility serves more than 300 visitors a day. It handled about 1,300 more inquiries this June than in the same month last year, Ostrander said.

New Jersey's and Florida's tourism agencies partner to provide real-time information about beach conditions in the two states. Since the beginning of the season, her department has fielded queries from places such as Florida and South Carolina almost daily, she said.

"But it's not just the South. We're getting people from everywhere," Ostrander said. "A lot of visitors from Europe seem to be flying into Newark or New York and end up down here. Years ago, you never saw that. We also have many people from the New York area who have discovered us down here."

The international market is important to Cape May County tourism. Canadians account for about 13 percent of annual visitors, say Wieland and Ostrander. Their agencies created the "Passport to Savings," a promotion that gives travelers who arrive using a passport discounts to over 100 area businesses.

About 28 percent of Cape May County visitors in 2009 came from Pennsylvania and 25 percent came from New Jersey, according to a study conducted by the firm Global Insight. Nineteen percent came from New York, 6 percent from the Maryland-Washington area, and 22 percent from elsewhere, the study said.