Rocky Point's rocky times

A sign welcomes spring breakers to Rocky Point. (Credit: Carlos Chavez/azcentral.com)

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For a vacation destination, Rocky Point feels a little tense right now.

Restaurant servers talk of empty tables. Nightclub promoters complain about nights that start too late to make any money. Resort managers talk about staff layoffs and hour cutbacks. And students talk disappointedly about how it's so much quieter this year than last.

There are spring break students in town, but some estimate that early week hotel bookings are at about 12 percent of capacity, and that Friday and Saturday bookings are only at about 70 percent.

Manuel Lopez is a host at the Friendly Dolphin restaurant in town and said that crowds usually arrive around March 4, but that his staff is still waiting to see the influx.

"Not that we always love spring breakers, but now we miss them," he said with a wry laugh.

Students backing out: Arizona State University student Britton Russell, 20, runs Student Body Travel in Tempe, which has booked several group trips each season to Rocky Point and other vacation destinations for the past three years. He's taking 370 students from Arizona to Rocky Point this year and was day drinking with one group at the Beach Club.

"But we had 20 percent of our students cancel in the last two weeks; that's unreal," he said. (Similar trips average a five to eight percent cancellation rate, typically, he said.) "I can attribute them all to the media. This is the deadest spring break they've ever had down here."

Not afraid: This is Caroline Bomberger's second spring break in Rocky Point. The 19 year-old ASU student from Tempe feels safe here and is glad she came, but wishes more people had decided to keep their plans, too.

"Two girls I work with went down on a previous weekend and they said they felt safe at all times, that it was the same old Rocky Point," she said. "So I decided it was fine. My mom was really nervous, but she was really nervous last year, so it's not a big deal."