Longboat businesses optimistic for better season from visitors

The return of car carriers trucking along Gulf of Mexico Drive is a welcome sight for Longboat Key business owners and managers.

The snowbirds are back, and their dollars extend a lifeline for businesses that rely on the winter season to make up for a long summer lull.

“You save every penny and then you use that money to get through the summer,” Lynn Christensen, co-owner of Harry’s Continental Kitchens, said.

With a deli, restaurant, convenience store and catering business on the north end of the Key, Harry’s is a well-known Longboat mainstay. Opened by Harry and Lynn Christensen in 1978, their son Hal Christensen is general manager, working hand-in-hand with his parents.

The start of the season is big for Harry’s, with Hal estimating triple or even five times the amount of business rolling in during the height of season.

“People want to say it’ll be year-round out here. Well, it really stays seasonal,” Lynn said. “You have your snowbirds, you have your locals and you have your tourists, and that makes up your clientele on Longboat.”

Photo by S.T. Cardinal

Judy Johnson is the owner and manager of Swim City, a swimwear, beach accessories and casual wear store across from a public beach access on Gulf of Mexico Drive. She sees a big impact on foot traffic coming into the store during season.

“We can have double the amount of people coming in,” Johnson said. “It depends on hotel occupancy, rental units, so forth. We hope it’s going to be back to pre-hurricane levels this year.”

Hurricanes Helene and Milton battered the Gulf coast barrier island, and businesses that were physically damaged were economically hurt as well. Johnson said Swim City closed just before Milton touched down on Siesta Key on Oct. 9, 2024. With both flooding and wind damage sustained by the hurricanes, Johnson couldn’t reopen her store until March.

“That’s basically losing a majority of season,” she said.

Business leaders on the island are cautiously optimistic that traffic on the Key returns to pre-hurricane levels. After a hurricane, tourists are sometimes wary of returning to the island, Dry Dock General Manager Wil Stutzman said.

“The hardest part is after a hurricane it typically takes two full years, in my opinion, to really have the full business back again,” Stutzman said. “Because the year after people may wonder if we’re okay down here and they hear stories about the state of St. Pete and those areas, so people are more hesitant to return.”

And then there’s the seasonal residents who may not be able to return to their winter home or vacation rental yet.

“I still think like 20 to 30% of the accommodations out here and the houses don’t even have people in them right now whether they’re torn down or still under construction,” Hal said. “You have the first floor of Whitney Beach, you have the Spanish Main areas that don’t have a lot of people. Those are 500-600 units in those, and then you have all the little wicker inns and places that aren’t open yet either that are gone because of the hurricanes, so that’s a lot of the tourism that would come down and spend a week in the summer and go out to eat or get something and bring back that aren’t there now, either.”

A slow ramp-up

There’s no first day of snowbird season, but there is an agreed-upon time where people begin to flock to Longboat Key.

“Third week of October, a light switch goes off and it changes instantly,” Stutzman said.

Town manager Howard Tipton said he starts to see an initial increase of people coming back to the Key in mid-October, but peak season begins in January.

“We think it starts now. But it really starts after the first of the year,” Tipton said. “February, March and April are just crazy.”

With that in mind, the town schedules construction projects during the summer when traffic is less busy. Although there were more repairs than improvements due to hurricane impacts, the town has pushed to get projects done before the “crazy” time of year. The Country Club Shores turn lane additions are expected to be mostly done by the end of the month, and hurricane-related repairs to Joan M. Durante Community Park will also wrap up by then before the town shifts to repairing Quick Point Nature Preserve.

Businesses get work done in the summer, too. Dry Dock closed for six days in September for renovations and maintenance. Zota Beach Resort just replaced the floors in all 187 of its rooms in phases, general manager Roy Padgett said.

Upstaffing

In a tourist-dependent economy of a beach town, and with wages increasing, managers and owners need to get creative to balance staffing and customer demand.

Johnson with Swim City said she hires seasonal employees to prepare for the influx of people, and typically schedules about 40 more hours to payroll during season. That’s not set in stone, though.

“It takes careful planning and diligence,” she said. “You’re going to have dips, but we have reports and try to keep our finger on the pulse and stay diligent.”

Thanks in part to Floridians choosing Zota Resort as the venue for their staycation during the summer and fall, Padgett said Zota stays busy year-round. Because of that, there’s not much need to reduce staff in the offseason from September to December, but there’s still some seasonality to their staffing approach.

“We typically run close to about 100 employees at the hotel,” Padgett said. “(During the offseason) we don’t vary but about a 10% difference. Not many.”

Harry’s has about 70 to 80 employees during the busiest time of the year from January to April, said Hal, with about 40 employed all year.

“We’ve got our core full-time people that we employ year-round, and we hire seasonal people for the busy months,” Lynn said.

Stutzman said he is lucky to be able to keep most of his staff year-round because there’s really only two very slow months for business, August and September. During that time, he will change the number of servers and bartenders he puts on the floor, limiting their shifts per week but still allowing them to retain a job all year.

“The only way to get around (cutting staff) is cutting back the amount of shifts they have,” Stutzman said.

Photo by S.T. Cardinal

He said being located on the south end of the island just across the bridge benefits Dry Dock by being easily accessible to Lido Key residents and St. Armands visitors, though he hopes he doesn’t see a drop now that Mote Marine relocated its aquarium off City Island.

Some businesses change hours of operation, too. Lazy Lobster, for example, didn’t open for lunch during the summer. At Harry’s, they closed the deli a couple hours early four days of the week and closed the restaurant on Mondays.

As managers prepare to increase staff and hours for the season, they’re cautiously optimistic the visitors and part-time residents will in turn return to paradise.

“I think there might be some people that think ‘oh, they just got hit by a hurricane. I’m not going to vacation there this year. I’m going somewhere else’,” Hal said. “Hopefully they have short-term memory loss and don’t remember the hurricanes.”