We just spent a week at the Wyndham Ocean Walk in Daytona Beach. It was supposed to be spring break, but it was nothing like it was in the 80’s when I lived there for a few brief moments of my life. The beach was not crowded, there were no concerts at the band shell, just a few hundred (literally) college age kids drinking daily at the pool bar.
Maybe they (Daytona Beach) should give incentives for filling up hotel rooms or for the college with the most attendees. I was prepared for the worst: long lines on the elevator, no place to sit on the beach, the pool being filled with hundreds of people, and then nothing of the sort happened.
There are many ways incentives can be handled. Our CEShoppes Select-A-Gift program has 3 or more ways to reward customers and employees alike. There is an on-line program with no cost to the customer, where the recipient logs in and picks their gift and we ship them out. This one comes with point certificates, which are purchased for a nominal charge. This program would be great for hotel staff to hand out certificates to those staff members who get great ratings by the hotel guests. They can save up their certificates and redeem them for name brand gifts worth up to $4,000! The gift booklet program also would work well for hotels. The more the hotel guest or college vacation promotion department spends, the bigger the gift book.
There are just numerous ways to get guests to the city. I felt bad for the merchants up and down the block. The nightly news said it was supposed to be “Black College Week”. But they interviewed a few college kids who should have been there for this event, and they had never heard of Black College Week.
Over all our vacation went well. No incidents and the kids had plenty of room to build their sand castle.
We did contribute to the local economy while we were there, my son purchased a skim board, and we took in the “Race to Witch Mountain” movie, and ate at some of the local restaurants with gift card rewards we received from using our American Express card. You see there are a lot of ways to reward people to use your services and remember who you are at the same time.
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