A successful Sun Fest shows signs of a tourism uptick

Sun Fest in Ocean City is always a tourism favorite according to officials, but few know just how much the event means for both the wallets of local business owners and the artists who participate.    

This year 47 ABC learned everyone benefited from the large crowds from the boardwalk venues such as Thrasher’s who said they have done extremely well, to the hotels in the area who sold out a high number of rooms.

“We had our Coca-Cola (representative) on site for our opening day and she said when she was here, she was online looking at hotels and that’s exactly what she was seeing, she was seeing hotels don’t have any vacancies, there was no rooms available to be found,” said director of special events for Ocean City, Frank Miller.

Although there wasn’t sunshine for all four days of Sun Fest, both officials and vendors said the popularity of the festival has been trending upwards.

“Every year it’s been going up for me ever since, I’ve probably doing this for probably about eight years now and every year it has gone up,” said Tim Re, who owns a grass engraving store in Laurel, Del.

Re said Sun Fest brings in roughly 30 percent of his income. He believes that event organizers have done a great job of boosting attendance year after year.

Miller said the success of Sun Fest can be partly attributed to the amount of loyal patrons that come back every year, but also the uptick in tourism that seems to be a sign of a rebounding economy.
  
“All the events have been trending up, its been just a fantastic year for events, its been a great year for the town itself and I think our director of public works put it best, the recession is over,” Miller said.