San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Tourism anxiety at rural getaways
State destinations depend on visitors but fear virus
As California begins to emerge from its economic coma, rural counties that depend on summer tourists are anxiously bracing for what comes next. Many in the state’s popular weekend destinations worry that the unprecedented halt of travel could give way to a deluge of corona viruscarrying arrivals. Others say economic relief can’t come soon enough.
“We live and die by tourists in the summer, so it’s quickly approaching the breaking point where, if we don’t get these places open, these small businesses will suffer greatly,” said Jeff Simpson, economic development manager for Mono County, which spans the Eastern Sierra and abuts Yosemite National Park. “Our businesses can’t survive just on locals.”
That’s the story for small communities across the state’s mountainous north, the Sierra region and the remote coast, which have been particularly hard hit in the past 10 weeks of coronavirus
fears and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s shelterinplace mandate.
After a decade of boom times for California’s travel and tourism industry, the shortterm outlook is grim. According to new forecasts from Visit California, the state tourism bureau, overall visitor spending could plummet by $72.1 billion by the end of the year — about 50% of spending in 2019. The state’s 1.2 million tourism jobs, it said, would be cut in half by the end of May.
But with Newsom’s decision last week to begin relaxing restrictions — allowing counties that meet certain health requirements to start serving essential business travelers — many in the state’s remote areas anticipate that leisure travel will resume soon as well.
“A crack in the door has been opened,” said Colleen Dalton, director of tourism and economic programs for Visit Truckee, “but we have to wait and see what happens.”
Tourism accounted for more than 10% of the workforces in 15 California counties in 2018 — all of which are in more rural and remote pockets of the state — according to Visit California.
But in some places, tourism’s impact is much greater. In Mono County, for instance, home to about 14,200 residents, tourism generates $603 million per year, accounting for about 95% of the county’s economic activity, Simpson said. Agriculture, the secondlargest industry in Mono, generates $43 million.
The most severe losses may have already come to pass, said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, which produced the Visit California projections this month. “April was the trough,” he said. “Our current assumptions are that travelers will begin gravitating toward the regions that reopen first, and travel will take a different shape than it has in years past.”
A silver lining to the downturn may be that, as shelterinplace restrictions ease, Californians will travel closer to home this year.
In 2019, Californians accounted for more than 72% of leisure trips taken in the state, according to the May tourism report. With international travel at a standstill, that percentage is expected to increase, shifting the focus to vacation destinations within driving distance of California’s major population centers.
“California has so many great attractions across the state and also a large traveling base,” Sacks said. “So in that sense, there’s a lot of opportunity.”
For regions that have avoided the worst of the outbreak, the prospect of hosting masses of travelers from major cities comes with a heavy dose of apprehension. While they might reinvigorate a vital lifeline of regional, roadtrip tourism, visitors could also expose small towns to a public health emergency.
“There are people who feel we’re opening up too soon and people who feel we need to open up right away,” said Lisa Mayo, president and CEO of Visit Tuolumne County. “It’s a tough balance right now.”
Rural counties are taking different tacks to deal with the pressures presented by the coronavirus.
At an extreme end of the spectrum, Tulare County moved to reopen most commercial establishments this month, in defiance of the state’s shelterinplace mandate. But other counties, including Trinity in the far north, remain all but completely shut down in hopes of avoiding a public health crisis.
Most counties, however, are moving cautiously to ensure that they rebound without compromising the foundations of their economies — even if that means discouraging tourists from visiting for the time being. On Thursday, for instance, the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority sent an email to remind people not to visit the area during Memorial Day weekend.
Mono and Tuolumne may soon catch a break. Last week, officials at Yosemite National Park presented a draft strategy for reopening the park in phases. They suggested that the process could begin as early as June, which would open a vital lifeline of tourism to gateway communities that have been struggling.
In Redding and across the far north, hotel occupancy in April and May is down twothirds compared with the same period last year, said Laurie Baker, director of the Shasta Cascade Wonderland Association, the tourism bureau representing California’s eight most northerly counties. Many residents in the conservative northern region don’t appreciate the value of travelers hailing from the state’s major cities, she said, but being reliant on tourism offers an upside.
“Because we’re small and we have fewer businesses to support, I think we might bounce back a little faster than the cities” as shelterinplace begins to relax, Baker said.
That’s in line with the message Visit California is broadcasting to its constituency.
“The economic recovery of California’s tourism industry amid the coronavirus pandemic depends almost exclusively on Californians feeling comfortable with safely exploring their local communities, then taking day trips and progressing to overnight road trips,” Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of Visit California, said in an email to The Chronicle. “We expect it will be Californians to hit the road, rediscover their state and drive economic recovery.”