Hurricane Is Blow to Florida Tourism

Casey Parlacka planned to be in Walt Disney World on Thursday for a Labor Day weekend trip with her best friend.

Instead, she stayed home in Michigan after her mother-in-law sent photographs of damage from Hurricane Charley three weeks ago and warned that the approaching Hurricane Frances would be much worse.

“We wanted to be in Florida right now, but we would rather be safe than in a hurricane,” Parlacka, 23, said by telephone from Grand Rapids.

Florida’s $50-billion tourism industry ground to a halt as Frances and its 140-mph winds neared the state. Florida officials issued the biggest evacuation request in state history, urging 2.5 million residents to clear out.

“This is the worst time of the year to have this hurricane,” said Abe Pizam, a professor of hospitality management at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. “Labor Day weekend is very busy.”

He said the lost revenue probably would be hundreds of millions of dollars. The 300-room beachfront Holiday Inn Beach Resort in Melbourne, about 70 miles southeast of Orlando, was fully booked for the holiday weekend until guests -- and employees -- began evacuating Thursday.

General manager Tim Michaud said he expected at least $100,000 in lost revenue.

“That’s just rooms,” Michaud said. “We’re also losing functions for the weekend.”

Farther north, almost every business in Cocoa Beach was closed, including Ron Jon’s Surf Shop, which is usually open 24 hours a day.

The weekend won’t be a total loss for hotels. Most of the 120,000 hotel rooms in metropolitan Orlando, which has the second-largest hotel market in the nation behind Las Vegas, were occupied -- by evacuees. Only about 1,000 rooms were available for today.

Anheuser-Busch Cos.-owned SeaWorld Orlando and Discovery Cove, and the two theme parks and Citywalk entertainment complex owned by NBC Universal’s Universal Orlando, planned to close this afternoon and all day Saturday. Walt Disney World stopped accepting reservations for the weekend, although officials at the Walt Disney Co. park hadn’t decided whether to close.

Disney’s crowds were unusually light. At the Magic Kingdom, people waited about 10 minutes for rides like Space Mountain that can take two hours to get on. The short waits were a boon for visitors like Barb Delaney of Springfield, Va., and her children.

“We’re going to look at it as one more adventure,” said Delaney, a civilian Department of Defense worker whose 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son saved three years’ worth of pocket change totaling $600 for the trip.

Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday warned visitors to stay out of Florida for the next few days, but then asked them to come back after the hurricane had passed -- very soon.

“If you decide to spend Labor Day somewhere else,” Bush said, “We ask that you reschedule your vacations.”