Tourism, hospitality sectors enchantment for extra state assist

BOSTON (SHNS) – The tourism and hospitality sectors have been decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The downturns in business will only recover slowly without additional government measures, industry leaders told lawmakers on Friday.

A parade of speakers at a tourism, arts and cultural development committee hearing outlined a terrible economic picture to learn about the impact of the pandemic. The widespread job loss and decline in spending, they warned, could take years to recover and affect workers across the state as well as tax revenues.

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Industry groups representing restaurants, hotels and motels, cultural organizations, entertainment venues, and tourism sponsorship called on the panel to increase spending on restoration grants, promotional programs promoting Massachusetts travel, and support for regional tourism councils.

“We will not be able to wish, pray, and hope for a way out of this pandemic,” said Martha Sheridan, president of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s just not going to happen. The only way we can get out of this is if we stay competitive and invest strategically in promoting tourism. “

The Baker administration has distributed more than $ 650 million in aid to approximately 14,400 companies to date, and cultural nonprofits received nearly $ 10 million through a separate grant program in January.

The federal government on Thursday launched a new $ 16 billion closed-venue grant program that includes live promoters, theater producers, live performing arts organization operators, museum operators, cinema operators and talent representatives affected by mandatory closings are supposed to help.

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Industry leaders want lawmakers to complement these programs. One of several top priorities mentioned is a bill (SD 2105) that will provide at least $ 200 million of the billions in federal funding for recovery programs in Massachusetts to help cultural organizations recover.

Funds would be distributed by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in the form of grants to nonprofit and nonprofit cultural organizations that could be used for payrolls, rentals, and other expenses, to adapt programming to COVID, and invest in technology and infrastructure for safe reopening.

As of Friday, 51 lawmakers had endorsed the bill drafted by the Co-Chair of the Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development Committee, Senator Edward Kennedy von Lowell.

Another major change that many would like to see is a clearer schedule of business restrictions. Knowing when the allowed collection limits will increase would encourage many workers in the industry to get back into the workforce, the speakers said, and give venues enough lead time to get operations up and running.

“If these employees don’t see the number of employees increasing and the number of people they serve is actually increasing, which has a direct impact on their wages, there may be a desire to go back to work for them less,” Sheridan said.

They also called on the Baker administration to free up $ 4 million to regional tourism councils, which is included in an economic development bill signed by Governor Charlie Baker in January. These councils, said Paul Sacco, president of the Massachusetts Lodging Association, play an important role in converting pent-up consumer demand into Massachusetts spending.

“If we don’t do something like you heard from the RTCs, we will have the missed opportunity to take part in this business from June to September,” he said.

While the industry has been badly hit across the country, the damage is particularly pronounced in Massachusetts. Leisure and hospitality, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, lost 30 percent of their jobs from February 2020 to February 2021, a far larger percentage than any of the other nine categories.

Ann Marie Casie, executive director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau north of Boston, said the projections suggest domestic travel will pick up again faster than international travel and will hit 2019 levels by the end of 2022.

“We won’t see a full recovery in the tourism industry as a whole until after 2024,” she said.

More than half of the 40,000 hotel jobs in the Bay State prior to COVID were either put on leave or eliminated, while occupancy in the statewide lodging market fell by nearly half from 2019 to 2020, Sacco told the committee.

The restaurant industry lost $ 7 billion in revenue over the course of a year, according to Bob Luz, president of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. After the initial closings in March 2020, when the state of emergency began, 3,400 restaurants in Massachusetts – about 23 percent of the state’s restaurants – never opened again.

Luz said legal permission to sell take-away alcohol was a boon during the pandemic. Prior to the COVID era, takeaway sales and delivery typically made up 8 to 10 percent of most seating restaurant sales, but that percentage hit 50 or 60 percent in winter, Luz said.

Nonprofit cultural organizations that responded to a mass culture council Impact survey have lost a total of $ 588 million in revenue since March 2020, and more than 2,900 artists and creatives who also responded have reported $ 30 million in personal income loss.

State-tracked data shows that sectors continue to lag behind other industries, even as vaccinations lead to heightened business optimism.

After falling sharply at the start of the pandemic, consumer spending recovered, beating January 2020 levels by around 10 percent in mid-March. That comes from figures that Mark Fuller, Undersecretary of State for Business Growth, presented at the hearing on Friday. However, spending on restaurants and hotels was still more than 15 percent below January 2020, while spending on entertainment and leisure continued to decline by around 45 percent.

Fuller said the differences reflect “extremely painful distortions as overall spending returns to more normal levels”.

Massachusetts entered phase four of the Baker government’s economic reopening plan on March 22, which reopened entertainment venues and raised the meeting limits for public facilities to 100 indoor and 150 outdoor.

Fuller told lawmakers that it remains unclear how consumer behavior, which is vital to the business prospects of the affected industries, will respond when restrictions wear off.

“This is a tremendous dynamic affected by the spread of COVID, the restrictions and gradual reopening, and people’s perception of the safety of these activities,” Fuller said. “Are you excited about going out and spending money? Are you excited to travel? Do you feel comfortable doing it? The recovery here, when we look to the future, is so much about consumer behavior and how people feel comfortable returning to normal levels of activity with a view to COVID. “

Several industry leaders warned the damage was having a significant impact across the state.

In Massachusetts, travel expenses have fallen by 53 percent – a noticeable decrease than in the United States as a whole, by 38 percent. “This translates into more than $ 15 billion in lost spending, $ 451 million in government tax losses and $ 234 million in tax losses for our cities and towns,” Casey said.

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The losses are also likely to have a cascading effect. For example, because there are fewer events or cultural activities taking place, there are fewer potential customers in restaurants and retail stores. In one 2019 reportArts Boston concluded that arts and cultural events drew more than four times as many visitors as all major Boston sporting events combined.

“We know arts and culture, as well as tourism and the humanities, generate a lot of income,” Michael Bobbitt, executive director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, told lawmakers. “If we want to recover, we have to duplicate and support these organizations even more.”