Memorial Day weekend brings sun, tourists back to Rehoboth Beach

Warm temperatures and sunny skies this Memorial Day weekend will provide a fitting tribute to the unofficial start of summer.

The weather also could not have come at a better time for Rehoboth Beach business owners who have been stymied by a string of rainy, cold weekends.

“I’m telling all my staff to be ready,” said Bill Frankis, co-owner of boardwalk favorites The Greene Turtle Sports Bar & Grille, Playland Arcade and Sofi’s Crepes.

“People are sick of being holed up in their houses,” he said. “They can’t wait to put their feet in the sand.”

Travelers who postponed their seaside fun this spring will find an ideal climate this weekend with temperatures forecast to be in the low 80s with no rain in sight.

Mix in lower gas prices and many beach merchants say this could be the busiest Memorial Day weekend in recent memory.

More than 106,000 Delawareans are expected to travel for the holiday – 2 percent more than last year, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic. Every campsite, cabin and cottage in Delaware’s 17 state parks was booked by mid-week, state officials said.

“It’s a gift,” said Meg Shivone, co-owner of the eclectic gift shop M Squared on Rehoboth Avenue. “It’s going to be a beautiful weekend and that’s something we’ve needed for a long time.”

Shifting seasons

While Memorial Day is the beginning of summer for many tourists, the last Monday in May typically comes well after the season has started for most business owners.

“Rehoboth has become more year-round than ever,” Shivone said. “Even in the offseason most of us are open on the weekends.”

Any downtime now comes during the worst weather in January and February. But that doesn’t mean business owners are not still busy.

Shivone and Rehoboth Toy and Kite Co. owner Bee Linzey said those are the months they hit up trade shows in search of the next season’s biggest sellers.

“A lot of people think we take the winters off,” Linzey said. “That’s not really true anymore.”

New products begin arriving in March and most are stocked on store shelves by Easter – the holiday many beach business owners now consider to be the start of beach season.

“It gets people thinking about their beach homes because it’s the first, true sign of spring,” Frankis said. “It means the winter is almost over.”

Hiring also begins in the dead of winter and wraps up by mid-May if businesses are lucky.

“That’s the hardest part,” Linzey said. “Training staff and getting them up to speed quickly is the real challenge.”

By the time Memorial Day rolls around, most Rehoboth Beach businesses usually have been up and running – at least on weekends – for six weeks or more.

“Usually, there’s a gradual increase in business that starts around Easter and builds to Memorial Day,” Frankis said

This year, however, the cold and rain has meant far fewer customers.

“It’s probably the worst early season we’ve ever had,” said Bill Svolis, whose father first opened the boardwalk eatery Gus and Gus Place in 1956. “This time around, the weather was better in March than it was in April and May.”

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A change in the weather

If the sun is shining, Memorial Day weekends are great for business. But it’s generally not the big boom casual observers might expect.

Most years, the holiday doesn’t even rank among the busiest of the summer.

The biggest days, business owners say, are the Fourth of July, followed by Labor Day in September – the last hurrah of summer. The rest of the list is filled by every weekend in between.

“A lot of people think Memorial Day weekend is this big, dynamic thing but it really isn’t,” said Tom Ibach, owner of the iconic, 89-year-old Dolle’s Candyland. “We have weekends in August that are much bigger.”

For most business owners, Memorial Day weekend represents a chance to get their feet wet before the real action starts later in the summer.

“You actually get a drop off after Memorial Day,” Frankis said. “But once school is out around the third week of June, that’s when you see the true 100-day dash for cash.”

Several business owners said they’ll be thankful if a strong Memorial Day weekend this year allows them to make up ground lost to the lousy spring.

“Pretty much everybody is behind on their numbers,” said Alper Akogoren, co-owner of Archie’s Ice Cream on Rehoboth Avenue. “We’re all going to be trying to get back what we didn’t see in May.”

While this weekend could go a long way in that endeavor, Rehoboth Beach stalwarts Svolis and Ibach said business on Memorial Day weekend offers no indication of how the rest of the summer will turn out.

“You can have a great Memorial Day and a crappy summer or a bad Memorial Day and a great summer,” Ibach said. “It’s just all about the weather.”

And, Svolis said, it’s still too early to tell whether Mother Nature will cooperate this season.

“Last summer was pretty good after a slow start, so you can hope, but there’s no way to know for sure,” he said. “That’s why farmers pray for rain, but we pray for sun.”

In the meantime, Linzey said, the only things a beach business owner can do is focus on the day at hand and hope the rest of the season takes care of itself.

“Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he said. “And we still have a long summer left to go.”

Contact business reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel.