TourismConnect summit in Rehoboth Beach seeks to build collaborative efforts for tourism across Delmarva
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. – During the TourismConnect Summit in Rehoboth Beach, representatives from Maryland, Delaware, and Southern New Jersey spoke on efforts to connect tourism efforts and bring more visitors to the beaches in the future.
“Visitors and travelers, they don’t really pay attention to borders, and I think we share a lot of collective assets along Delmarva, southern New Jersey,” said Southern Delaware Tourism Executive Director Scott Thomas.
Thomas says during the panels, the groups spoke on ways to increase travel between cities in Delaware and Maryland with increased bus, and smaller transit options to help bring the workforce to the beach towns, and ways to market Delmarva as a whole to new markets.
“Chicago, Atlanta, the south has not seen that push and we want to be collaborative,” Thomas said.
Officials at the event spoke of creating shared advertising campaigns to promote travel from new markets in the US to places like Rehoboth Beach, Cape May, and Cape Charles.
DelDOT officials highlighted the need to protect the ways tourists get to and travel from Delaware to other destinations, looking for increased funding to protect roads that could turn away tourists and locals if they fail.
“Route one between the Indian River Inlet Bridge and Dewey Beach, for example. Just recently last month, we had a storm that came in and forced us to close Route one for several hours because of a dune breach from the storm and put water on the roadway,” said DelDOT Spokesman CR McLeod.
The scope of the collaborative effort- includes Somerset County Maryland.
Tourism Director Clint Serling has been under-rated in their tourism potential, but by working together with other areas, they hope to build a name for themselves, with a proposed ferry from Annapolis to make those assets easier to reach.
“Between Somers Cove Marina, Deal Island State Park, or Smith Island, Maryland, all of those places have the assets that are going to allow you to sort of kind of step back, slow down and kind of leave feeling a little bit stronger than you did before,” Sterling said.
Members of the business community in Rehoboth also praised the efforts of their chamber in hosting year-round events that hotels say help keep rooms in demand year-round, a necessity given a 6 percent drop in hotel room bookings in Summer 2023.
“It was still a solid showing but with more people flying and a weather pattern that saw us have rain almost every weekend in the summer, we saw that dip but it is still above pre-pandemic levels,” Scott said.
The groups also heard from the business community on a need for more transit options beyond cars, and more seasonal housing for beach, and other tourism destination workers.
