Business above usual this Memorial Day

Andrew Edwards

Today, a few good men can get a free dinner at the Arches restaurant

in Newport Beach. Restaurant owner Dan Marcheano said an active-duty

Marine eats for free on Memorial Day.

“That’s what you have to do,” Marcheano, a retired Marine said.

“They’re the reason we have so much fun.”

Memorial Day -- a time for Americans to remember the deeds of

fallen soldiers -- is part of a three-day weekend that has become one

of the busiest travel days of the year and an unofficial start to

summer.

John Wayne Airport operators expect the weekend will be their

busiest period since Christmas season, deputy airport director

Courtney Wiercioch said. She said 84,000 travelers were expected to

pass through the airport between Friday and Wednesday.

Memorial Day weekend “officially kicks off our summer season,” at

the Four Seasons Hotel Newport Beach, hotel spokeswoman Pam Blanton

said. The hotel’s spa was booked solid for the weekend, when two new

menus were to be introduced.

Blanton and George Lysak, executive director of sales and

marketing for the Balboa Bay Club & Resort in Newport Beach agreed

that hoteliers tend to see a rise in the amount of vacation travelers

around June. However, resorts still depend on clear weather for

business to pick up.

“June really starts the summer season,” Lysak said. “Here you have

a little bit of the June gloom, which can affect leisure travel.”

“We’re kind of at the whim of the weatherman,” she said.

For the fiscal year beginning in July, Newport Beach officials are

counting on summer travelers to pay the bulk of the year’s bed tax,

city revenue manager Glen Everroad said.

Newport’s projections call for hotel visitors to shell out $8

million worth of bed taxes over the upcoming fiscal year, and

Everroad said 65% of that money is expected to come in July, August,

September and next June. Everroad is also looking forward to the city

receiving $1.1 million from travelers staying at vacation rentals. He

anticipates 80% of those funds will be paid during summer months.

Not all hotels are equally busy over the Memorial Day weekend,

said Afsaneh Torres, sales and marketing director for the Radisson

Hotel Newport Beach. Though her hotel was sold out for a youth

convention over the weekend, she said the holiday can be slow for

hotels around John Wayne Airport.

“The trend is we die down,” she said.

During the summer, the Radisson attracts a greater number of

family vacationers as opposed to business travelers than the rest of

the year. Like hotels in the airport area, Costa Mesa hotels tend to

draw more business travelers than vacationers. Jennifer Pease,

director of room operations at the Costa Mesa Marriott, said leisure

travelers do stay at her hotel on weekends, and those numbers usually

pick up in the summer.

“The business traveler leaves on a Thursday or Friday morning and

the weekender comes in,” Pease said.

Unlike Newport Beach, Costa Mesa’s bed taxes tend to come in at an

even pace throughout the year, without a summer peak, Costa Mesa

finance director Marc Puckett said. Costa Mesa is projected to

collect $4.9 million in bed taxes over the next fiscal year, which

translates to about $410,000 per month.

In Costa Mesa, travel patterns tend to mirror the business cycle

more than the seasons, Puckett said. This year, he said bed tax

revenues appear to be recovering from the travel dip that occurred in

the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

As the travel season gets into gear and shoppers prowl stores in

search of holiday bargains, Marcheano hopes people remember the

soldiers whose sacrifices Memorial Day was designed to commemorate.