GULF SHORES, Ala. – Visitors to Gulf Shores this summer will have a chance to bring home a video keepsake of their stay on the Gulf Coast.

Scott Crider of Coast 360 told the Gulf Shores council of a plan his cable TV station has to host Beach Olympics during the peak summer season involving visitors and locals alike.

His crews will film the events, replay them on Coast 360 and make them available through Youtube as well. On Feb. 13 the Gulf Shores City Council approved both an assembly permit and video permit for the events.

“They’ve come up with a program and what they envision is showing people all over the country our beautiful white sandy beaches and wonderful family destination we have here in Gulf Shores,” Grant Brown, Director of Recreation and Cultural Affairs said. “How they intend to do this is from Memorial Day through Labor Day host the Family Beach Olympics.”

Crider says plans are the works to have teams out on the beaches the first part of the week to drum up participants for the Thursday afternoon events.

“We are going to be creating an intern program for college-aged students from this area to come and actually have a job to work and learn things about marketing while they come and help us execute the program this summer,” Crider said.

“Their job is to go out and engage with people in the community on behalf of Coast 360 and the city and sponsors that are involved,” Crider said. “What our team 360 would be charged with, mainly, is to go out and engage with guests of the city during the tourism season, kids between the ages of about 5 and 11 and invite them to come participate in weekly, fun beach Olympics.”

Monday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays the teams would be out talking to people to get them down to the beach to participate. The show would shoot on Thursdays, be edited on Friday and aired for the first time on Saturday morning.

“And we’re talking real simple little games out on the beach,” Crider said. “Little obstacle courses, water balloon races, flipper race for parents. Just fun stuff that we could shoot out there.”

The show would be filmed at the main public beach. City leaders were receptive to the idea.

“If it’s successful as it looks like it could be you’re going to have quite a crowd, of not just participants, but spectators,” Mayor Robert Craft said. “That’d be a good situation.”

Brown said if the event grows, it could be moved to the beach near the West Second Street entrance and parking area.

“If we have to do it more than once a week, we can do that, too,” Crider said.

He believes the exposure potential for the city will grow with each show as more and more people share the experience through the internet. He pointed out that the City of Gulf Shores has 10,000 subscribers on Facebook and Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism has close to 75,000.

“This content, all this imagery and video that we shoot is going to be really fun, really colorful, very sharable content,” Crider said. “You can see, just through Facebook, very quickly the distribution of some of this videos. This can get out to many 10s of thousands of people all over the world very, very quickly.

“We have Youtube channels and other online distribution opportunities through our website.”

When the first round of participants go home, Crider says, they’ll share the experience with their friends.

“When people are trying to decide where to go, go to a beach that doesn’t have this or go to a beach that does,” Crider said. “Why not go and try to get the kids on the TV show? It reinforces our family-friendly image.”