Firefighters Urged Not to Delay Booking Rooms

WILDWOOD — Firefighters who are planning to attend the annual state firefighters convention Sept. 13-15 should get a move on booking their rooms. Otherwise there may be no room at the inn.
At the Greater Wildwoods Tourism Improvement and Development Authority monthly meeting Aug. 16, the housing department re-ported 3,000 rooms were still available for this year’s convention. But calls requesting space have been few and far between.
According to the re-port, several properties informed the convention center that they had not received deposits from a group they had hosted in past years and released that block of rooms.
Despite the demolition of many of the city’s older motels, 6,900 delegates attended the convention for the past two years, according to GWTIDA. Accompanying the registered delegates, are approximately 25,000 firefighters and their families.
Typically, large groups of firefighters attempt to stay under one roof. But dwindling motel rooms had caused disappointment among many fire departments in recent years, especially if the group had to be split up.
In order to compensate, neighboring towns such as Wildwood Crest, North Wildwood, Cape May, Stone Harbor and even offshore camp-grounds had an in-creased number of guests from the firemen’s convention.