Quack in action!
Duck Tours reopen after 4-month COVID shutdown
Make way for ducklings! Four months after the coronavirus pandemic forced the shutdown of all non-essential businesses in Massachusetts, Boston Duck Tours — a traditional rite of spring in Boston — is open for business.
“In a typical year, seeing the ducks on the road and the Charles River is a sign of spring,” said Tom Vigna, director of marketing and sales for the 26-year-old company. “This year, it’ll show the progress we’ve made in the hospitality and tourism industry, an industry that’s suffered greatly the last few months.”
The Duck Boats will leave every hour, beginning at 10 a.m. Monday from the Prudential Center, 10 a.m. Wednesday from the New England Aquarium and 10 a.m. July 22 from the Museum of Science, said CEO Cindy Brown.
Typically, the tours run every half hour, from March 21 to the Sunday after Thanksgiving, with a full fleet of 28 boats, Brown said. But the company is expecting fewer people initially and will need time to clean the boats after each tour, she said, so the Duck Boats will run every hour instead, using only half of the fleet for now.
“We’re hoping to get the rest of the season in because the governor and the mayor have been so diligent about reopening slowly,” Brown said. “We should be in a better position than states that reopened quickly.”
Both employees and customers will be required to wear masks, even though the Duck Boats are open-air vehicles, she said, and couples, families and other small groups of people will be allowed to sit together but will skip a row so that they’ll be separated from other customers on the boats.
“It will be almost a puzzle to be able to space guests,” Brown said. “We’re trying to maximize how many people we can fit, while maintaining space between each party. But we’re essentially an outdoor attraction, and we’re doing everything we can to keep both our employees and our guests safe, so we hope people will feel comfortable taking our tours.”
Normally in July, Boston Duck Tours would have about 200 employees, she said. But for now, it’s reopening with 60 to 70 because as March’s shutdown stretched into weeks and then months, the company furloughed about 15 employees and laid off about 30 drivers, narrators, ticket sellers and mechanics, while other people opted to quit because they were afraid of contracting the virus.
“The goal is to bring everyone back next March,” Brown said. “We’re just excited to come back. We desperately need people to support us so that we can come back next March for hopefully a more traditional season.”
The start of the Duck Tour season comes as Boston enters Phase 3 of the coronavirus economic restart, with movie theaters, gyms and historic sites all able to open a week after most of the rest of the state.