Most Mount Pleasant residents drive by our hotels without ever realizing what a huge sector of the town's economy they have become.

A new report indicates that hotel occupancy in Mount Pleasant has risen 10 percent since last year. The cost per room East of the Cooper has risen to $116.82, 5.4 percent higher than in 2010. Peninsular Charleston only reported a 6.6 percent increase in occupancy, while North Charleston showed a mere one percent bump over May 2010.

For the past two months, we have been working on transit outreach to support CARTA's new bus lines in Mount Pleasant. Tourism, hospitality and restaurants appear to be the largest single driver of transit ridership in our area. The 16.17 percent increase in ridership on our primary bus route, the #40 is clearly related to the robust growth in our hotel industry. Many of the 1929 additional passengers per month on that bus are tourists going to Charleston and hotel staff coming to work. Over a third of the internet traffic to our www.eastccrider.com web site are tourists looking for East Cooper transit information.

Though Mount Pleasant is still a town which turns in early, these hotels run 24/7. Even at two in the morning there are staff delivering fresh towels, dealing with problems and staffing the front desk. Huge numbers of employees, many who live in North Charleston, launder linens, clean rooms and maintain landscapes.

Our hotels are the town's largest source of tax revenue: paying property, sales and tourism taxes.

The hotels more than pay their way.

The town's efforts around them may account for our superior increases in occupancy over the last year, far above that of North Charleston.

There is a lot Mount Pleasant can do to make these hotels more of an economic resource.

Seven of our hotels are within walking distance of Waterfront Memorial Park and the visitor's center there.

The Wonders Way walkway on the Ravenel Bridge is a tourist attraction in its own right.

Where there are some spotty sections of sidewalk here and there, the pedestrian grid in this area has been filled in some over the years. Additional improvements can be expected as new road work on Johnnie Dodds Boulevard is finished.

Two of our CARTA regular bus routes run through the hotels near the Ravenel Bridge.

All three run through the smaller cluster near the intersection of Hungryneck and the IOP Connector.

Town government, CARTA and community volunteers are already promoting parking in Mount Pleasant and take the bus downtown.

Many of these workers have a 10 to 11 hour day which includes a full shift of work and a 90-minute commute home each way by bus or a 40-minute drive to reach their homes and families.

The front desk staff gets to work in the air conditioning, but I sincerely hope I'm not as clueless as the average hotel guest when I'm out of town. The questions asked are truly amazing.

You cannot drive your car to Ft. Sumter.

There are no tours of Rhett Butler's home downtown.

Which plantation is the best one really depends on what you want to see, which cannot be determined when the members of your party can't agree on what that is.

Some people just want to sit by the pool, wherever they are, even when the person who paid for the vacation feels like they need to go somewhere and actually see something.

Few people can fully explain to a Mount Pleasant visitor, in adequate detail, how to drive to a specific location in Downtown Charleston. If they do not know where they're going, they need to either get a map, printout or a GPS unit. Some people have these, but they can't use them. They patiently attempt to explain what becomes an ever more complex problem as visitors inject questions about parking, particularly free downtown parking and which restaurant has the best seafood.

To listen to desk attendants in hotel after hotel patiently attempt to unravel the conflicted needs of their visitors while smiling is to see the single greatest expression of patience and self restraint found outside of a hospital emergency room.

From the lady making the beds to the desk attendant answering the questions, they've gutted out a 10 percent increase in business. We locals don't see them much, but when you do, remember to express your appreciation.

(William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives in I'On Village.)