Greater Philadelphia business owners are losing confidence. According to data recently reported in the Philadelphia Business Journal, the regional sentiment index for CEOs and business owners fell to 107.54 in the second quarter, its lowest reading in six quarters, with gas prices and inflation cited as the drivers.
Those concerns are real and deserve attention. But they are also obscuring a regional economic story that is developing in our favor — one that Philadelphia’s civic leadership has not yet recognized, and cannot afford to keep ignoring.
The conversation about regional growth focuses, understandably, on Center City verticals like eds and meds, life sciences and the downtown office recovery. Those matter. But they leave out one of the most dynamic and least-discussed economic shifts in our region.
Within a tank of gas from Philadelphia sits one of the most concentrated experiential hospitality markets on the East Coast. From the Jersey Shore to South Jersey wine country, from the Lehigh Valley to the Pocono region to Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the Brandywine corridor, Greater Philadelphia is surrounded by a leisure geography most Philadelphians have never thought of as a single asset.
It is one. And it is becoming one of the most valuable assets the region has. The reason this matters now is that American leisure preferences are shifting in our favor.
According to Hilton’s 2026 Travel Trends Report, drawn from a survey of 14,000 travelers across 14 countries, people are planning trips around emotion rather than destination. The question driving travel has shifted from “Where should I go?” to “Why do I want to go?” Rest, reconnection and meaning now top the list. PwC’s Hospitality Outlook found that luxury resort properties anchored by golf, wellness and destination programming were the only segment to post RevPAR growth in 2025, while traditional hotel occupancy slipped.
Golf participation reinforces the pattern. Per Baird data highlighted in a recent Forbes piece, U.S. golf participation reached a record 47.2 million Americans in 2024, with the 18-to-34 age group now the largest cohort. We do not have to look far to see what that translates to locally. When the 2026 PGA Championship came to Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square this May, Billy Penn reported it brought an estimated 200,000 visitors and a projected $125 million economic impact to the surrounding region in a single week. That was a single event at a single club.
Forbes also documented the renaissance of multi-day group travel as families and friend groups increasingly invest in time together rather than in things.
Charleston, SC, Asheville, NC and Savannah, GA have spent the last 20 years building tourism economies around their drive-to geography. Greater Philadelphia has not done the same work.
The categories of leisure Americans are choosing right now are exactly the categories Greater Philadelphia’s regional geography is built to serve. We just have not built the civic muscle to recognize it.
I’m not writing this as a neutral observer. I have a direct stake in it, which is why I’m confident the opportunity is far bigger than any one operator. At VIVÂMEE Hospitality, the platform my wife Melanie and I co-founded on the conviction that great hospitality revives the human soul, we operate seven resorts across the Mid-Atlantic and Colorado with more than 1,000 team members.
We call our standard SoulFULL Service: the belief that genuine care, beauty and rest send people home restored. Three of our properties sit inside the Greater Philadelphia drive-to radius: Renault Winery & Resort in Egg Harbor City, our 2018 flagship; LBI National Golf & Resort minutes from Long Beach Island; and our two newest additions on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Queenstown Harbor Golf Resort and the Golf Club at South River near Annapolis.
Last fall, a Philadelphia law firm brought its entire leadership team to LBI National for a two-day offsite — 40 professionals who had not been in the same room together since before the pandemic. They came for strategy and stayed for something they hadn’t planned on: a genuine exhale. The managing partner told me afterward it was the first time in years he had watched his colleagues actually laugh. That isn’t really a hospitality story; it’s a story about what this region can offer that no other Center City conference room can.
What eight years of operating across this region has taught me is that these properties are not isolated leisure destinations. They function as a network — one that nobody has yet had the civic vocabulary to name. The bride and groom from Old City booking Renault. The Philadelphia law firm running its leadership retreat at LBI National. The multi-generational Main Line family gathering at Queenstown for a grandmother’s 80th birthday.
Every one of those weekends generates wages, tax revenue, vendor relationships and, perhaps most importantly, memories that bind people to this region in ways that no downtown amenity campaign ever could. These are not small things. They are the connective tissue of a regional economy — and we have barely begun to recognize them as such.
Why Philadelphians should care
This matters for four reasons.
It matters for jobs. The regional hospitality economy supports thousands of positions across food and beverage, golf operations, events, wellness, lodging and management. Many are accessible without four-year degrees and carry real career ladders. In a labor market that has become brutally hard for young workers to enter without specialized training, these are good on-ramps.
It matters for where our money goes. Every weekend a Philadelphia family chooses LBI or the Eastern Shore over flying to Florida is dollars retained in the regional economy, including a meaningful share that recirculates back into Philadelphia restaurants, retailers and service businesses on the front and back ends of the trip.
It matters for heritage. Historic clubs, wineries and resorts across our region face capital pressure. Some will get the investment they need to be preserved. Others will not. The kind of capital that flows in will determine which of our regional landmarks survive the next decade with their character intact.
And it matters for regional identity. Cities like Charleston, SC, Asheville, NC and Savannah, GA have spent the last 20 years building tourism economies around their drive-to geography. Greater Philadelphia has equal or better natural assets. We have not done the same work.
Greater Philadelphia is surrounded by a leisure geography most Philadelphians have never thought of as a single asset.
What civic leadership should do
The good news is that recognizing the opportunity is the hard part. Acting on it is comparatively straightforward.
Regional tourism collaboration would be the first move. Visit Philadelphia, the New Jersey Travel and Tourism Department, Visit Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau should coordinate marketing around a unified Greater Philadelphia experiential region rather than competing for the same drive-to traffic. Travelers do not see state lines. The marketing should not either.
Workforce development is the second. Philadelphia-area community colleges and culinary programs should formalize partnerships with regional resort operators. The hospitality jobs are here. The training pipelines should match them.
Transportation is the third. Drive-to leisure depends on drive-time. Regional infrastructure investment, particularly on the corridors connecting Center City to the shore and to the Maryland and Pocono routes, has direct economic implications for this sector.
And recognition. Chambers of commerce, regional business journals and civic leadership organizations could begin treating regional experiential hospitality as a strategic industry alongside life sciences, financial services and the downtown office economy. That alone would accelerate the next decade of growth.
When we talk about Philadelphia, we tend to tell the story from inside Center City office towers. Some of the most interesting growth in our regional economy is happening on courses, in vineyards, around event lawns and along waterfronts that most Philadelphians could reach by lunchtime.
Whether Greater Philadelphia becomes recognized as one of the East Coast’s great experiential regions is partly a function of capital and partly a function of civic imagination. The capital is already arriving — patient, long-term, mission-driven capital that believes these places are worth preserving and elevating. What we need now is a civic narrative that matches the ambition. The people of this region have always understood that the best things in life are not found in office towers. It is time for our leadership class to understand it too.
Josh McCallen is CEO and Co-Founder of VIVÂMEE Hospitality, an Inc. 5000-recognized resort operator with properties across the Mid-Atlantic, including Renault Winery & Resort in Egg Harbor City, N.J., LBI National Golf & Resort, Queenstown Harbor Golf Resort and the Golf Club at South River in Maryland. VIVÂMEE’s mission is to restore the meaning of hospitality to its true purpose — reviving souls by transforming work into a gift of love. Learn more at vivamee.com.
The Citizen welcomes guest commentary from community members who represent that it is their own work and their own opinion based on true facts that they know firsthand.
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