In a report issued Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 10, an official with the Wilmington/Cape Fear Coast Convention and Visitor’s Bureau released information that sheds light on waning traffic to Wrightsville Beach’s tourism Web site.
Despite the appearance of deteriorating tallies, officials contend that the decreased Web traffic is merely due to the site’s increased navigation capabilities, caused by the installation of features like drop-down menus—and is not related to a slump in interest.
In fact, the new statistics likely paint a more realistic picture of Wrightsville’s Web site traffic.
The bureau’s marketing manager, Paige Somervell, announced that page views in October on www.visitwrightsville.com had plummeted to 67,191, or 49 percent less than the same time last year. Site visits have also toppled to 20,694, about 8 percent less than October 2008.
Somervell said the most-viewed pages in October were the events page, screensaver download, hotel, rental, lodging, photos, dining and map/direction pages.
Web traffic has been a concern since the economic downturn burst the tourism bubble, leading to a steady decrease in room occupancy across the board for the lodging industry in Wrightsville Beach.
Room occupancy tax collections for September were not available when Somervell reported Web statistics, and she seemed wary over whether those numbers would be available in time for when tourism and town officials meet Tuesday evening as the Wrightsville Beach Tourism Development Authority.
The Wrightsville lodging industry took an enormous hit in August when room occupancy crumbled 17.88 percent—or more than $1 million—from the same month in 2008.
“It’s not a great looking picture,” Kim Hufham, President/CEO of the bureau said when the room occupancy collections were announced.
“When August is down it really hits us hard because August is the second largest month we have,” she added.
Wrightsville Beach has been hit the hardest out of any municipality in New Hanover County, falling on a blade that includes the economic recession coupled with the increased inventory on the Wilmington side of the Heide Trask drawbridge.
Starting in November, the CVB will be airing commercials marketing Wrightsville Beach during 16 ACC basket ball games as part of its initiative to elevate the tourism industry to more comfortable levels.
