GULF SHORES, Ala. – While the crowds at BeachFest 2012 may have felt the impact of Hurricane Isaac’s feinting in the Gulf of Mexico, the inaugural kick-off party for football season still got lots of attention.

“We had about 10,000 people in attendance over the three days,” Beth Gendler, vice president of marketing for Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism, said. “We know that we had a looming tropical occurrence, so Sunday was very light and we ended up breaking down a little early.”

But that didn’t stop the word from getting out.

“I think one of the big successes was the media coverage,” Gendler said. “We had 115 articles and TV spots reaching over 43 million people. That did not include a five-day live broadcast from the Zone radio station out of Birmingham. Nor did it include the one-hour ESPN SEC preview show that aired on Sunday morning at 9 o’clock. The entire show was footage from Gulf Shores and the BeachFest.”

People liked what they saw, Gendler said.

“It showed Les Miles, Nick Saban, Gene Chizik all being interviewed on the ESPN set as well as from the legendary coaches that were here and just general football from the beach,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

Gendler spoke at a work session of the Gulf Shores City Council on Monday to go ahead and get the ball rolling for BeachFest 2013. Getting the city onboard now will help jumpstart marketing for the second event.

“I wanted give you all a brief recap of BeachFest 2012 so that we could ask early for BeachFest 2013 knowing that right now is too early to permit because we’re too far out,” she said. “But we wanted to be able to promote this quickly and as early as possible.

“We’d like to move forward for 2013 on the same set of dates which puts at Friday, Aug. 23 through Sunday Aug. 26 for the actual fan zone event that would happen at the Gulf Shores Public Beach. That’s what we’re asking for here today, permission to do that so we can start promoting that as early as the SEC Football Championship.”

The SEC Championship Game will be played in Atlanta on Dec. 1.

Gendler said all the positive coverage and a video on secbeachfest.com of the 2012 event will help grow the event by being able to show potential sponsors how the success of the first year.

“Before we had that (video) it was just all conceptual and it shows a good picture of what the event was like,” she said. “We had a lot of corporate sponsors there that planned to be there next year and plan to do it bigger, better. People that weren’t there will be next year as far as other SEC corporate sponsors. It’s been received very well.”

The early OK from the city will help put those marketing plans into motion.  

“We’re hoping, if we get permission here, really wrap it up with what coaches are going to be there, the marketing plan, by January so that our industry partners, our part of BeachFest can start marketing it to their base of business,” Gendler said.

The BeachFest, even with the threat of Hurricane Isaac, had a positive impact on the economy. Being the weekend before Labor Day in 2012 and 2013 gives the end of the season two strong weekends.

“The room nights that we could account for were about 1,300 which based on all of our accounts was about a $500,000 direct visitor spending impact including their additional spending while they were here,” Gendler said.

Mayor Robert Craft said he expects that to grow in the second year as well.

“In a year our accommodations folks will be able to push that to people that are here that maybe want to come back, I would think you have a better chance of extending the rental into that area having a year to talk about it,” Craft said. “And you have some tangible evidence of what it was. ‘This is what we did.’”

The idea of a second year for the BeachFest was well-received by the City Council.

“It was a good event,” Mayor Robert Craft said. “Unfortunately there weren’t many people there to see it. As with any first-time event you struggle to get the number of people that you’d like to have.

“Being on television like it was and introducing people to clean, white, sandy beaches like it was is always a good think, especially lately. I thought it was well presented.”

The council will vote on giving the nod for the second BeachFest during the regular council session on Monday.