YEAR END: Panama City Beach Spring Break boomed again, but was it wild like the old days?

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Panama City Beach saw a massive spike in visitors during Spring Break in 2021 compared to recent years. Still, it wasn’t like the rowdy PCB Spring Breaks of old.

The March article highlighting the latest boost in Spring Break activity, while comparing it to the years before laws to curb excessive partying were put in place, was among the top five most viewed News Herald stories for 2021.

For Maddie Beumer, an 18-year-old from Minnesota, Spring Break in Panama City Beach was a lot of fun this year, but was not quite what she expected.

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As she stood with her friends on the beach on March 25 near the Russell-Fields Pier, with double-red flags flying overhead and a gusty sea breeze in the air, Beumer said she was a bit surprised by the lack of college students visiting the area.

"I feel like it's a good environment if you want to bring your family here, but like for college kids ... maybe not," the St. Cloud State University freshman said.

She and her friends had no idea about the city's rowdy Spring Break past, when tens of thousands of party-hungry tourists flocked to the Beach every year, garnering the city national publicity but drastically increasing crime.

Just six years since fed-up officials approved a list of ordinances specifically targeted to halt the madness, Spring Break has become somewhat of a sensitive topic for many locals and even city officials, who remain laser-focused on preventing Panama City Beach from reverting to its old ways.

"I believe that the sensitivity comes from a lot of the issues that we had both from a public safety standpoint and a highly negative national image standpoint," Beach Councilman Geoff McConnell wrote in an email in March. "The crimes that we have seen this year and in the last several years (during March) are (no longer) college students or the people (who) came here to prey on them with drugs, alcohol and violent crimes ... we clearly are not a college spring break destination any longer.”

McConnell also said this Spring Break appears to be busier than the past few years, which is great for the city since it derives about 95% of its annual general fund from tourism spending.

Along with larger-than-normal crowds, crime on the Beach also is down significantly this month compared to March of 2018, before Hurricane Michael steamrolled the Panhandle and the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the world.

According to information provided by the Panama City Beach Police Department, only 18 people were arrested from March 1 to March 24 for having alcohol on the beach, 95 fewer than during the same month in 2018. There also were 623 fewer citations written, 254 fewer adult arrests and 11 fewer juvenile arrests.

However, beachgoers still seem to have an issue with being told they can't swim in the Gulf of Mexico under double-red flags.

After temporarily restricting access to the water for the first time this year on March 17 because of rip currents, 27 people were ticketed for refusing to get out of the water in just three days, Beach police said. That, however, can't be accurately compared to 2018 because PCB didn't ramp up efforts to control the issue until last July, when code enforcement officers were given the ability to cite people for the violation.

Later in a September News Herald article, officials confirmed that Spring Break did indeed boom — helping Bay County collect millions of dollars more in bed tax money during the first seven months of 2021 than during the same period for the past three years.

"This spring is different than any other spring we've had because this is the first time that we have been in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of the Spring Break season," said Dan Rowe, president and CEO of Visit Panama City Beach.

He added that while there were some college students visiting PCB, the majority of tourists were families, many of whom came to the area to vacation in an open environment where they can socially distance.

Compared to Spring Break 2018, Rowe said this year was "on par to where (it) should be.”

"If you just take a look at the number of people who are here, the traffic, the folks who are at Pier Park, the people who are out on the sand, it feel like a normal March for us," he said.

Tourism gains were something Suzanne Bizzell, manager of Pineapple Willy's on Thomas Drive, said she has seen during her 11 years with the restaurant.

It also was something Bizzell said happened a lot faster than she expected.

In the middle of a Spring Break season she described as "pretty awesome," she said she thought the Beach had a good mix of families and college students this year.

Although Bizzell admitted the Spring Break crowds of the past were good for business, she added that her restaurant is doing great and looking forward to a promising future.

"We are one of the most beautiful places, vacation destinations in the world and having the ... mixture of the groups has really been good," Bizzell said.

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: YEAR END: Panama City Beach saw spike in Spring Break tourism