CLEARWATER BEACH, Fla. — It's Spring Break time across the Bay area and beaches have been packed this week.

Beaches are crowded with people on a staycation, as well as many others traveling here from other states where they're dealing with more coronavirus restrictions.

The beaches look a lot different now compared to a year ago. This year, it was just a big question mark on what spring break was going to look like.

Pinellas County tourism officials said last Friday 93 percent of hotels were booked. Then, by Saturday, occupancy hit 96 percent.

Those are numbers not reached since before the pandemic.

“The crowds that I see are a lot bigger than what I thought we would see when I came down,” said Mike Long, visiting from Tennessee. “It’s quite packed and we didn’t think we would see that.”

The crowds are causing some visitors, like Long, to slightly modify his vacation plans just because of all the people.

But overall, the beaches are looking like they did before the pandemic hit.

To date, 25,000 spring breakers have taken the visitor’s bureau pledge to mask up and spread out.

Visitor’s Bureau street teams have given out almost 300 gift cards to people they’ve seen following Covid protocols.

That’s their creative way of trying to get visitors to follow the rules.

Also, there were a couple of arrests on the beach earlier this week with some college-aged kids getting out of hand.

But overall, law enforcement says it hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary.