LUXURY BEACH VACATIONS for LESS

For many people, summer vacation means a trip to the beach with the family.

But this year, with gas prices sky high and budgets a little tighter than usual, many people are rethinking their annual trips. Some are considering a vacation at home, while many who plan to head to the beach expect to shorten their stay or curtail activities like dining at restaurants and taking the kids to amusement parks.

And then there are those creative types who - determined not to compromise the fun of their annual trek to the ocean - have figured out a way to head to the beach for less. Those folks have discovered how to vacation at upscale resorts for bargain prices at the most popular times of the summer.

How can they do that? Well, the trick is knowing just which properties in a beach town view the summer as peak season and which see summer as "down time." Yes, even a beach town can have some businesses that see summer as "down time."

Let's use Myrtle Beach, S.C. as an example. The "Grand Strand" as it is known, has more than 60 miles of beautiful Atlantic Ocean beach. Oceanfront hotels there make most of their profits during the summer when the bulk of the area's 14 million annual tourists come in for their summer vacations. Nightly oceanfront room rates can start around $250.

But the Grand Strand is also the "World Capital of Golf" with more than 100 courses. Many of those courses have villas or condos built along the fairways. While those villas are filled with golfers in the spring and fall, in summer many sit empty.

A spacious villa at a golf resort less than a half-mile from the ocean is an ideal place to house the whole family. It's also a bargain - the villa is likely to cost about half what that cramped hotel room will. Some golf resorts are quite luxurious with huge swimming pools, well-appointed fitness centers, shuttles to the beach, and other amenities that guests can use for free.