After taking a break from traveling last summer, Susan Newell and her family are happy to be tourists once more.
Many attractions were closed or restricted last summer because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the family decided to stay at home in Pontotoc, Miss.
But this summer, they’ve visited several destinations, including Mississippi Children’s Museum-Meridian in mid-July. Newell and her husband played with their three young boys in the museum’s ambulance and in other exhibits.
The kids approved of the trip.
“They like it, which is why they’re just running around right now,” Newell said. “They’re not sitting still.”
Tourism in Meridian has picked up in recent months because many people have gotten vaccinated against COVID-19 and because case numbers have remained low, until recently. Hotel occupancy numbers, for example, are substantially higher than they were in the winter, according to industry reports provided by the Lauderdale County Tourism Bureau.
The local uptick in tourism is also part of a national trend. AAA reports that a similar number of people are traveling as in pre-pandemic year 2019, said AAA spokesperson Don Redman.
More travelers are stopping in Meridian
One way to measure the amount of tourism and travel in Lauderdale County is to look at the hotel occupancy rate, which is the percentage of hotel rooms in the county that are occupied.
The county’s monthly hotel occupancy rate increased this spring after low winter numbers, according to reports provided by the tourism bureau. People wanted to get out and travel after not being able to for a while, said Dede Mogollon, the tourism bureau’s executive director.
“What’s really interesting to us is right now, over the last couple of months, we’ve really been outpacing our numbers from 2019,” Mogollon said.
For each month from February to June, the hotel occupancy rate in…
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