Priced out of the Jersey Shore: Some travelers opt for all-inclusive resorts instead as rental costs soar

Kristin Bernstein gets teary-eyed thinking about her family’s upcoming Jersey Shore vacation.

She grew up going to Wildwood every summer, and the 32-year-old would love her own children, now an infant and a toddler, to make similar childhood memories. But she has come to terms with the fact that this year will likely be her family’s last week down the Shore.

“I don’t think going forward at this rate it’s going to be an option for my family,” said Bernstein, a nurse practitioner who lives in Newtown Square.

For the week of Labor Day, Bernstein said she and her husband, a physical therapist, are paying about $3,600 for a small condo in Ocean City.

It is the most they’ve ever spent at the Shore. The rental alone is more than the couple will spend on a weeklong anniversary trip to an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana, an occasion they’ve been saving for intensely, Bernstein said. She has eyed houses in Florida that would cost about half as much, even with airfare, for the same week next summer.

“I don’t know how people are doing it,” Bernstein said. “I don’t know how they’re affording the Shore.”

» READ MORE: Jersey Shore vacations can be expensive. Here’s how to stay on budget.

The Inquirer heard from dozens of people across the region who have been priced out of the Shore or can no longer justify the cost. Some have found cheaper vacation spots that they enjoy just as much — or more.

Rebecca Wzorek, 40, a travel specialist at Mad Hatter Adventures in Broomall, said she has received an increasing number of calls over the past two years from people asking how much an all-inclusive vacation costs compared to a Shore house rental.

Wzorek understands where they’re coming from: Her family of 5 is paying about $4,500 for a weeklong, prime-season rental in Sea Isle. Last summer, she went to a top-notch all-inclusive in Mexico for the same price, which included flight, food, drink, entertainment, and activities.

“It’s a great quote-unquote vacation,” said Wzorek. “But when you’re going down, you’re still packing up and buying all your food and cooking and cleaning and schlepping to the beach.”

After dropping about $2,500 on one long weekend at the Shore during the pandemic, José Casalina started thinking about whether his family of four was getting their money’s worth.

Down the Shore, the price of everything — from rentals to pizza to beach chairs — is higher than it used to be.

Post-pandemic inflation has driven up costs for business owners, at the same time that many employers have hiked hourly pay amid continued staffing shortages.

“It was so expensive, and it gets really crowded down there, so you don’t really get the bang for your buck,” said Casalina, 45, of Glenside. “The whole idea of going on vacation is to relax, and the Jersey Shore was the completely opposite of relaxing.”

He has spent $1,500 for a weekend at an Ocean City bed and breakfast that was “a complete dump,” he said, and more than $100 on boardwalk ride tickets, which he says cost the same as a season pass to Dorney Park.

In 2021, Casalina, a self-employed architect design consult, and his wife, a banker, bought an investment property in the Poconos, where they spend four to five weeks of the summer and six or seven weekends in the winter and have access to a pool and other activities.

“This will be the first year that we have no intentions of going down the Shore,” he said.

Others said they have found better value at other beaches outside of New Jersey.

For Jersey Shore renters, prices overall remain higher than they were pre-COVID, but they have not jumped as much this season as they did between summer 2021 and summer 2022, said real estate agents in Ocean City, Avalon, Stone Harbor, and Sea Isle City.

With a limited supply of short-term rentals, Pat Mayer, a real estate agent and Jersey Shore Chamber of Commerce board member, said she sees bidding wars on short-term rentals, with some sellers putting their homes on multiple platforms to see where they can get the best price.

“Sellers and landlords truly have a pick of the litter,” Mayer said. “People are kind of saying ‘name your price.’ ”

Nancy Rothwell, 69, of Cheltenham, said she saw rental prices and availability change drastically over the last two years. The rentals she could find were between $5,000 and $10,000 for a week, no longer making it feasible for her family to continue a 30-year tradition of vacationing in Ocean City.

Last summer, after retiring from her job as a product technical support manager, she found a hotel in Ocean City, Md., where she, her husband, her two children, and their partners could stay for three nights for about $1,000 per couple.

She misses the Jersey Shore, she said, and mourns the loss of her family’s tradition.

“It is sad,” Rothwell said, “but we had to lose it because of the cost.”

This August, Erin Cofone, 45, of Springfield, Delaware County, is spending less than $3,000 to rent a single-family home in the Outer Banks. The house has a pool, is a couple blocks from the free beach, and allows the family to bring their dogs, saving them on boarding fees.

“To get that kind of house in-season in New Jersey, we’d probably have spent $6,000 or $7,000,” she said.

Cofone’s parents live in Somers Point, right outside Ocean City, but even when she visits them, she said she seldom goes into town anymore due to the hassle and cost of parking.

And a weeklong rental at the Jersey Shore doesn’t seem worth it at the current prices.

“If you don’t have a house on the island, it’s almost impossible to visit and have it be economical,” Cofone said. “I love the rides. I love the experience, and I want my kids to have it. It just adds up.”

“If I’m going to spend $3,000 to $5,000 by the time you’re done, with the house and the food and stuff and all the tchotchkes you buy … I’d rather go to Disney World,” she added. “If I want to spend that money, I’d rather have a bigger experience.”

Staff writer Lizzy McLellan Ravitch contributed to this article.