Easter, Spring Break Bless Resort Business

And right now, Disney's 18 hotels, 21,000 hotel rooms, 10 milion sf of retail-restaurant-commercial and four theme parks are beginning to bounce back gradually from dismal attendance figures immediately following 9-11, the company acknowledges.

But Disney representatives won't disclose specific attendance figures for the weekends of Palm Sunday, March 24 and Easter Sunday, March 31, even though area hospitality consultants independently put the number at about 50,000, the theme park's daily capacity before it has to close the turnstiles. Disney's Animal Kingdom attraction brought in its biggest crowds since it opened in 1998, the company says.

Representatives for Universal Orlando's two theme parks, which can hold 80,000 visitors daily, confirmed near-capacity numbers on Easter weekend at the Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure attractions. Attendance equaled Universal's record December 2000 mark, the company says.

At the same time, the attractions' total 20,000 parking spots were less than full the rest of the week, Universal representatives say. Still, Universal and Disney executives remain optimistic the tourist attendance momentum will carry over to the summer and fall.

New preliminary figures from Smith Travel Research of Hendersonville, TN support that optimism. Occupancy at some of the larger hotels hit 84.3% on Saturday, March 23, a day before Palm Sunday. That performance was up from an average 40% occupancy among the 113,000 hotel and motel rooms immediately following 9-11.

The good news comes as at least 200 mom-and-pop hotel/motel operators struggle to make their annual $20,000 to $100,000 property tax payments on typical 50-room to 100-room properties to Osceola County tax collector Patsy Heffner.

The deadline was March 31. Late payers are automatically hit with a 3% penalty. Gov. Jeb Bush is expected to sign a 90 day extension that would be retroactive to March 31.

Also feeling the recession's brunt are the local governments which collect the 5% tax on each hotel room. Orange County, which used to take in an average $100,000 per year, collected $8.6 million in February, according to county comptroller Martha O. Haynie.

That number is down by 13.5% compared to February 2001 collections but was an improvement from January of this year when collections were down 22% from January 2001.