Oceans Calling a financial success for lodging and Downtown OC

OCEAN CITY, Md. – Oceans Calling may have ended on October 1st, but the Town of Ocean City is still feeling the financial effects of from it the day after. O.C. Hotel and Motel Association Director Susan Jones Oceans says Ocean Calling was a slam dunk for hotels and motels all around the city, but in terms of the restaurant industry, it missed the mark for several business in Northern O.C.

When you have a festival that is that big of that magnitude, when it is from beginning at noon and ending at 11:00p.m., it’s really going to put a lot of people in one specific area for a long time.

Jones says people attending the festival did not want to go too far from the event for two reasons; they had too much fun and couldn’t drive or they lacked the proper transportation because they were from out of town.

“Certainly helped the lodging industry for sure, but was a mixed bag for the restaurants.”

“So, if you are in the festival footprint, then those businesses did really really well, but it may not have been as good for people outside of the footprint.”

When talking to people owning and managing the hotels, Jones says, “They did have peak rates for this weekend because they knew it was going to draw a crowd.”

“They were not in the July rates, but they were definitely not in off-season September rates.”

Jones says the biggest success for the event was drawing in new people from all over the country, not just surrounding states and Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan agrees.

“We had 45,000 people here a day,” Mayor Meehan said. “It’s probably twice that as far as the number of people that came for the festival itself.”

“There were people here from every state in the country. People here from foreign countries.”

When waiting at a restaurant nearby the event on Thursday night. Jones says she even was able to speak to someone who traveled across the country to see the bands playing at Oceans Calling.

“We met a lovely couple from Wisconsin who came specifically just to see Jack Johnson,” Jones said. “That was her Christmas gift.”