Although the leading edge of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was still several miles away from the Florida Panhandle last Thursday, it was still attacking the area’s wallet. A spokeswoman for the Pensacola Bay Area Convenient and Visitors Bureau said that phones have just basically stopped ringing in the past couple of weeks for new bookings over the summer. This is bad news since the summer season is usually the busiest.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spotted oil sheen about six miles off Navarre Beach, which is east of Pensacola, on Thursday morning. Any oil that hits the shore is likely to have been weathered into balls or mats of tar.

Buck Lee, who is the executive director of the Santa Rose Island Authority in Pensacola Beach said that, as of late Thursday morning, there was no oil or tar balls that washed up. They just had a great Memorial Day weekend, but now they are just waiting anxiously to see what happens.

Reports show that a wave of hotel cancellations hit Florida in late April. This came just after the sinking of the offshore drill rig Deepwater Horizon uncapped an undersea oil well off Louisiana. These cancellations started to trail off, but now as the oil starts to hit the beaches, the cancellations have started back up.

Back in 2009, tourism was able to put about $1.2 billion into the Escambia Country economy. It was also able to make sure that 20,000 people had a job and brought in 3.5 million overnight visitors a year. Buck Lee said that the island authority hopes to put cameras on the beach and video streaming on the internet within two weeks. This way people can see for themselves whether there is oil on the beach or not.