by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
While many Jacksonville natives simply can’t wait for the upcoming Super Bowl and its multitude of related activities, there may be some locals who can’t wait to skip town that week.
Realizing the possibility of an exodus from Jacksonville in early February, IMIC Hotels, a hotel management group in Columbia, S.C., has launched a website filled with “Get Out of Jax” vacation packages available during Super Bowl week.
Cindy McCoy, director of marketing for the hotel group, said the company came up with the Get Out of Jax campaign in September when its hotels in Amelia Island and Jekyll Island were already running out of reservations for Super Bowl week.
“We were seeing that we were getting bookings as far north as Jekyll,” McCoy said. “We figured if they were getting booked that far North, people would probably want to get away from the area. It dawned us on to do something.”
On the website, www.getoutofjax. com, IMIC has put together several packages for many of its 17 hotels around the Southeast, some as far away as Nashville. The packages include hotel accommodations plus tickets or passes to different types of entertainment, which vary depending on the destination.
For example, the Myrtle Beach, S.C. package includes either a golfing excursion or a wild night of chauffeured bar hopping while the Charlotte, N.C. trip is NASCAR themed and includes a tour of the local racetrack. Other trips packages include visiting the Biltmore Estate near Asheville, N.C. or going caving in Bristol, Tenn.
Most of the packages are priced based on double occupancy but none seem to be exceedingly expensive. Depending on the location, prices range from about $60 per person per night to around $300. McCoy said the packages are affordable because IMIC’s group of hotels are middle-of-the-road establishments like Sleep Inns and Hampton Inns.
“We think it is a really fun idea,” she said. “All of these hotels are not major resort properties so they are affordable for people to do.”
The website also includes a top 10 list of reasons to leave the city during the big game. Though traffic and large crowds are both mentioned twice in the list, the main reason the website gives for leaving Jacksonville is to avoid another “wardrobe malfunction” at this year’s halftime show.
“We knew that there would be a certain number of people in Jacksonville that would not want to participate in the Super Bowl,” McCoy said, “so we packaged some our best locations for them.”
“These were just things people could do instead of getting stuck in traffic in downtown Jacksonville while those activities were going on. We just
hope that people will want to get out
of Jacksonville.”