Businesses prepare for hopping Easter weekend

The Easter Bunny will bring more than eggs and candy when he hops through town this Sunday, April 8: He’ll deliver a full crowd of tourists and visitors to local hotels and motels during what is typically one of season’s busiest weekends.

It turns out the Easter Bunny’s timing is good this year: Last year, the holiday came two weeks later, creating a lull in post-spring break traffic during the first two weeks of April.

Karen Rangel, regional director of sales at Ocean Properties Ltd., which owns the Longboat Key Hilton Beachfront Resort, Lido Beach Resort and Holiday Inn Lido Beach, said that the holiday’s timing means that the three properties won’t experience the slight drop they felt last year because of Easter’s late arrival. All three hotels are expected to be full this weekend, as they have been during each weekend of March.

“What we are finding with every weekend is, 24 hours in, we’re done,” Rangel said. “It’s really important that people are making reservations outside of a 72-hour window.”

Next year, when Easter falls on March 31, the resorts will plan for an even more compressed season, Rangel said.

D.M. Williams, general manager of Casa del Mar, estimated that the 102-room resort will be at 95% capacity, with bookings up for the weekend compared to last year. (Williams said he typically leaves a few rooms open in case of an emergency.)

But although Easter gets part of the credit for the hopping weekend, it isn’t the only reason for the traffic. Many tourism professionals say the season overall has been busier than in recent years.

Sandra Rios, director of communications at the Longboat Key Club and Resort, said that reservations are up between 3% and 10% this weekend over last year’s Easter weekend, and the resort expects 100% occupancy this weekend. That spike will continue through next week, when the resort hosts the Sarasota Open, she said. This year, the resort has had more guests booking weekly stays compared to past years in which stays have been shorter, Rios said.

Jan Jordan, vice president of Florida Vacation Connection, said that most of the 180 properties the company manages island-wide will be booked, many by visitors who arrived in January and are staying through the month of April.

“We’re very fortunate to be seeing these kind of numbers,” she said. “We’ve been in business for 18 years and I don’t know that we’ve ever seen these kind of occupancy levels.”