Market Trends
Natural Resources attract Human Resources
By Patrick Mason, Co-Founder, Center for Carolina Living & CarolinaLiving.com
South Carolina PRT promotes our natural resources with about $10 million a year to attract 30 million visitors and their vacation dollars. This 25-year history of smart marketing is reaping extra benefits far beyond the estimated $17 billion in tourism output impact that will be pumped into our 2010 economy. That's good for the state. We say, it's just the tip of the iceberg.
What's far more important – in long-term economic thinking – is the way so many of those affluent visitors turn into new residents. After visiting frequently and getting moved, they spend $278,000 on average for a home. The majority will begin to look for career opportunities or launching/moving a business. In fact, our 26-question, Carolina Lifestyle Survey™ of 90,500 households since 1987 with plans for a Carolina visit and move, reports that 14% intend to start a business.
Sunrise Industry
Although it seems light-years ago, before the 1960s, Carolina growth was flat to negative for a century and a half! Those days are over.
In 2010, we estimate 1.8 million people (7% of our 28.5 million visitors) will tour South Carolina with the primary purpose of investigating second home, relocation, retirement, new business and job opportunities. These explorers are coined, "Turbo-Tourists" because they visit more frequently, stay longer and spend more on average.
Then, if they relocate, a "turbo" effect kicks in twice. First, as they begin generating five separate vacationing parties a year… friends and family here to be entertained. Again, when some of these birds-of-a-feather also relocate.
In all, an accurate estimate of 155,000 people (gross counts of men, women and children) will actually move into South Carolina in 2010, bringing a minimum of $11 billion in fresh cash to our economy in the first year of their arrival. That trend continues up forever.
Based on the latest US Census, IRS data and most recently the Harris Poll, a growing share of Americans are choosing the Carolinas for the next phase in their lives and careers. Our In-migration Industry is just in the "sunrise stage", and it's significant.
In-migration by itself will create at least 13,000 new permanent jobs across South Carolina in 2010 and carries an estimated annual growth rate averaging 4% that dramatically increases as soon as affluent boomers begin to retire in 2011. Interestingly, the latest Baby Boomer study by Del Webb Corporation reveals the leading edge of this 74-million strong generation believes retirement is only a "mid-life event".
Dubbed, Zoomers, they are three times more mobile than their parents! And they want more challenging retirements that include work, starting a new businesses, continuing education, accomplishing new goals, volunteering. [Del Webb Boomer Survey]
CarolinaLiving.com research confirms that today, only 26% of these 155,000 in-migrants are over age 50, in some phase of retirement. Recent economic research shows South Carolina's current 65+ population (775,000+ people; 518,000 households) exerts an economic impact output of $15.7 billion each year and sustains 145,000+ jobs.
"Retirees are an industry in themselves," explains Dr. Frank Hefner, who worked on the exhaustive $53,000 economic impact study on the retirement industry for the SC Tourism Department. According to a US Department of Agriculture study on rural states like the Carolinas, it takes 3.7 new manufacturing jobs to equal the economic impact of one new affluent retiree household.
Charles S.Way, Jr., and his successors as SC Secretary's of Commerce, acknowledge that "lifestyle" is key to any corporate relocation consideration. A region that offers strong cultural, recreational and community resources is a place where companies feel they can entertain their clients, or more importantly, raise their families. Boeing, Google or BMW sound familiar?
It may have started with Charles Fraser, who 50 years ago, began to transform Hilton Head Island (with golf on international television) into the kind of place that continues to attract well-heeled families of all ages. Now we find the phenomena throughout the state (and indeed the Carolinas) in such first-class communities as Litchfield, Seabrook, Keowee Key, and more recently, Cliffs at Glassy, Daniel Island, Sun City, Long Creek Plantation, Lake Carolina and Savannah Lakes Village, just to name a few.
This is the kind of "capital importation" in the form of people is what business executives really like to see in their backyards – talented, educated people, and many of them eager to work.
And, while large cities such as Greenville, Columbia and Charleston continue to attract visitors and in-migrating families, the smaller communities surrounding them often have just as much or more appeal than the metropolitan giants. These smaller communities are close by yet offer a friendly, slower pace that appeals to people fleeing the frozen, congested, pricey North. CarolinaLiving.com research consistently affirms that 67% of those relocating seek small-town or rural destinations.
On the average, the 155,000 new South Carolinians in 2010 will be relatively well-off, with median household incomes of $119,000. We know 77% will arrive with college degrees.
As for the 26% that are relocating in some phase of retirement, vast majority just do not fit the shuffleboard stereotype. These "Over50's" are ready to invest in new business (8% say they will), open a satellite office, or put their talents to work part or full-time. Most will work for free as volunteers.
The "Under50's" dubbed "the Creative Class" seek career and entrepreneurial opportunities. Clearly, they are talented, highly motivated individuals ready to deliver strengths and assets beyond a healthy financial portfolio.
They are coming our way – elders, youngsters and everyone in between. Our task is to put the plans and policies in place to ensure South Carolina is a great place to visit, live, grow, do business and retire, today and for the next 100 years.
The "Turbo-Tourist" defined …
The goal is to have economic development leaders understand that Tourism is the birth-mother of another huge Carolina economic engine called the In-migration Industry.
This travel segment estimated to be 6-million visitors exploring both Carolinas with investment and relocation motivations is branded: "Turbo-Tourists".
Highly beneficial to EDOs and CVBs, these affluent, educated families frequent numerous destinations as part of their exploration mission. They reserve way in advance, spend more, stay longer and return more frequently, on average.
Beyond a $2,000 to $10,000 vacation, there's a "turbo-effect" when they relocate and/or acquire a second home, investing $278,000 to over a million in the first year. Each new household creates 1.9 jobs locally.
Then, the "turbo-effect" kicks in again, as homeowners begin entertaining, on average, six friends and family groups a year, some of whom, like birds-of-a-feather, will also become a Turbo-Tourist and relocate or invest here.
A third "turbo-effect" ices the economic cake as the research consistently reports that 14% "say" they plan to move or launch a business bringing intellectual capital, investing millions and creating thousands of new jobs across the Carolinas.
Thoughtful estimates suggest the In-Migration Industry annually generates $10 billion* in fresh cash to the South Carolina economy ... $20 billion to North Carolina, thanks, in part, to public sector, aggressive and sustained tourism marketing campaigns. We estimate $20 million in marketing is spent annually by private sector residential community developers across the Carolinas targeting affluent families to "tour" their destination and properties.
The Carolinas In-Migration Industry and Turbo-Tourism grows every year and continues growing for at least 25 years.
Patrick Mason is Co-Founder of the Center For Carolina Living, a Columbia, SC based research and marketing corporation established in 1986. Reply to: Pmason@carolinaliving.com. To order the CarolinaLiving.com Guide ™ call 1-800-849-6683. Or visit www.carolinaliving.com. Write: 4201 Blossom Street, Columbia, SC 29205.
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