You can look at the water right now, you can look at the beach. “I think our area has recovered profoundly. “We’re just amazingly thankful,” said Scarritt. Today all that seems like a bad, distant dream as he watches clear gulf waters slide past the hull during an afternoon of sailing off Alabama’s coast. Scarritt, who also owns a beach service company, purchased the sailboat only months before the spill and had to keep it out of the oil-marred waters that summer. Ted Scarritt, who offers tourist cruises in Orange Beach aboard his 53-foot catamaran “Wild Hearts,” remembers crying and praying while the spill was happening. Residents feared that images of oil-soaked birds and blackened beaches would permanently change travel patterns and leave towns like Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Destin, Florida, as the forgotten coast. Travel Association expects Americans to spend about 5 percent more this Memorial Day than last.īut back in 2010, there were questions and fears over whether the tourist economy of the northern Gulf Coast would ever recover from the spill. The theme parks of Orlando, Florida, helped draw a record 62 million visitors to the city last year, and the U.S. attractions have seen big increases during the same period as the economy recovered following the 2008 financial crisis and Americans returned to the road. The tourism surge isn’t happening in a vacuum: Many U.S. The company has developed 19 buildings with more than 3,200 condo units on the Alabama coast, including one that was finished with a $37 million settlement from BP after the spill.
Bp client base lost due to oil spill full#
Yet, at the same time, parking lots are full outside the same coastal hotels and condominium towers that struggled for business and slashed prices while crude was pouring into the gulf off Louisiana’s coast in 2010.īrett is an owner of Brett/Robinson Real Estate, where he said business is up about 30 percent since the year before the spill. Attorneys for businesses and individuals claiming damages from the spill announced a $211 million settlement last week with Transocean Ltd., owner of the failed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Meanwhile, many are still wrangling with BP over spill-related claims. Pockets of oil still blot the sea floor and spots along Louisiana’s coast. Questions remain about the long-term environmental impacts of the BP disaster, with a report released just last week finding a definite link between the spill and a record die-off of the bottlenose dolphins that tourists love to spot along the northern Gulf Coast. (AP) - With the Memorial Day holiday here, fallout from the oil spill that left Gulf Coast beaches smeared with gooey tar balls and scared away visitors in 2010 is being credited, oddly, with something no one imagined back then: An increase in tourism in the region.įive years after the BP disaster, the petroleum giant that was vilified during heated town hall meetings for killing a way of life is now being praised by some along the coast for spending more than $230 million to help lure visitors back to an area that some feared would die because of the spill.
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