By Donald Wittkowski
A couple of years ago, Paula Doll was buying lottery tickets from a vending machine at a Wawa store when she had an epiphany.
“Well, if they can sell lottery tickets out of a vending machine, we should be able to sell beach tags out of a vending machine,” she recalled thinking to herself at the time.
Doll, the chief financial officer for Sea Isle City, began looking into things and not too long afterward her idea led to the very first beach tag vending machine at the Jersey Shore.
Although the frigid winter weather now may make it hard to think about leisurely summer vacations at the seashore, Sea Isle has found that beach tag sales from the vending machine – and other outlets in town – can be pretty strong during the offseason.
The city is in the midst of selling 2018 beach tags inspired by Sea Isle’s Polar Bear Plunge, the madcap dip in the frosty ocean that draws thousands of visitors to town each February. The whimsically designed tags depict a polar bear playing with a beach ball and are on sale for the discounted preseason price of $20.
Doll said she expects all 1,500 of the limited edition Polar Bear beach tags will sell out.
Sea Isle gets creative with its beach tags to drive sales. Leading up to Christmas, there were gingerbread man-themed holiday beach tags touted as perfect stocking stuffers. They sold out, Doll noted.
The Polar Bear tags will be followed with a limited run of St. Patrick’s Day beach badges.
“A lot of people do buy them for gifts, so I’m told,” Doll said of the special tags.
The Christmas-themed, Polar Bear and St. Patrick’s Day beach tags are good for the entire 2018 summer season. The discounted price of $20 represents a $5 savings over the full cost of a seasonal beach tag. The preseason price is in effect for tags bought before May 15.
Sea Isle also offers the option of beach tag gift certificates.
Gift certificates are an old-school way of buying beach tags. In the past two years, Sea Isle has introduced other options for people to purchase the tags, including the vending machine.
Doll said Sea Isle has bragging rights for being the first town at the Jersey Shore to have a beach tag vending machine.
“We were the first one. It was our idea. Since then, we’ve had some copycats,” she pointed out.
Introduced in late 2016, the vending machine is located on the first floor of City Hall.
In 2017, about 1,200 to 1,300 beach tags were purchased from the machine, Doll said. Buyers should be aware, though, that the machine accepts cash only.
Beach tags are sold at other locations in town, including the Tax Office on the second floor of City Hall and at the Sea Isle City Welcome Center on John F. Kennedy Boulevard.
In 2016, Sea Isle was among the first shore towns to offer a mobile app that lets people purchase beach tags using their smartphones.
Beach tag sales are an important revenue source for Sea Isle. The money pays for lifeguards, keeping the beaches clean and other beach-related expenses. Without beach tags, those expenses would have to be funded by taxpayers, Doll explained.
In 2017, Sea Isle sold 100,477 seasonal, weekly and daily beach tags for total revenue of about $1.4 million. The 2017 revenue figure was slightly less than the $1.45 million in beach tag sales in 2016. Doll attributed the 2017 revenue decline on some rainy weather during the summer that cut down on sales.
