By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com
Shuttered restaurants. Closed gift shops and visitors’ centers. Hotel, motel and other lodging reservations cancelled by the hundreds, all over fears of a coronavirus pandemic.
Welcome to spring break 2020 on the Oregon coast.
Most years, spring break is the time when tourism-related businesses begin ramping up for the summer high season. The influx of travelers to the coast allows owners to bolster hiring efforts, while taking in enough money to cover the costs of the winter doldrums.
This is not shaping up to be one of those years.
“Stephen King couldn’t come up with a horror story like this,” said Drew Roslund, who oversees operations of the Overleaf Lodge & Spa and Fireside Motel, both in Yachats. “If things keep going like this, Yachats will be a ghost town.”
Normally, the 97 rooms Roslund manages average around 80 percent occupancy during spring break. The sudden rash of cancellations that began late last week has already cut that in half, with the long-term assessment looking even gloomier.
“If we go on a month and a half like this, I’m hoping we can keep the staff stabilized,” said Roslund, whose businesses employ about 65 workers. “But if this virus drags into July or August, well, that brings us to an entirely new level.”
On Friday night, the Overleaf and Fireside motels announced they were closing until at least May 1.
In terms of economic impact, it is difficult to overstate how important tourism is to Lincoln County and the rest of the Oregon coast.
In 2018, for instance, the most recent year such data exists, tourism-related destination spending in Lincoln County hit nearly $620 million and accounted for more than 5,000 jobs, said Erik Knoder, a state Employment Department regional economist based in Newport.
“That’s bigger than any other industry payroll in the county,” he said. “It’s an astounding proportion for one industry.”
Business owners, under the auspices of Oregon Coast Community College’s Small Business Development Center, have just started meeting in an effort to map out possible steps to counter the virus-related shutdown. Topics on the table include layoff aversion programs and potential loan sources for hard-hit small businesses.
So far, however, options appear limited.
“We’re in triage mode,” said Marcus Hinz, executive director of the Oregon Coast Visitors Association, an arm of the state’s Travel Oregon agency. “But right now, we don’t have any solutions.”
It doesn’t help, he added, that the vast majority of tourism-reliant operations on the coast are small family businesses.
“There are very few with deep enough pockets to weather even a temporary cash-flow crisis,” Hinz said. “The impact of this is immediate and it’s going to be tremendously damaging.”
At Sweet Homes Vacation Getaways in Yachats, the county’s largest privately owned rental management company, cancellations are pouring in.
“We’ve already had more than 100 cancelled reservations for spring break,” said Jamie Michel, the company’s vice president of development and operations. “It’s just horribly devastating.”
The company employs about 50 local families whose tasks include housekeeping, maintenance, deliveries and related jobs.
“If this turns around anytime soon, we’re hoping we can continue with our current payroll,” Michel said. “But if the virus drags into summer, we’ll be having an entirely different conversation.”
If, as expected, the Covid-19 outbreak continues to devastate local motels and restaurants, there will be also be fallout on the city of Yachats’ budget. Yachats’ operations and projects depend heavily on the more than $1 million it collects a year in lodging taxes and from a 5 percent tax on prepared food and beverages in the city. But other than observing the dropoff of visitors and dining from the outside, it has no way of knowing what those tax collections will be until April 30 when taxes from January, February and March are due.
Coastal events are cancelled
Those who do make it to the coast already will face the cancellation or postponement of popular events and gatherings.
Whale Watch Week and its volunteer stations, for instance, are shut down, and SOLVE’s Oregon Spring Beach Cleanup is postponed until July 5. Virtually all events that would draw people to the coast are postponed or cancelled.
Other two-week closures include Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Florence Visitor Center, Seaside History Museum and the Cape Perpetua Visitors Center.
On Thursday, Oregon State Parks announced it will keep all campgrounds statewide open through Spring Break, but close them for at least a month starting April 3.
“We rely on volunteers, many of whom are older and in a higher-risk demographic,” said Lisa Romano, public affairs manager for the Siuslaw National Forest, which maintains the Cape Perpetua center. “Closing the center is the responsible thing to do.”
Still, business owners are doing what they can to cope.
Luna Sea Fish House and Drift Inn Hotel and Restaurant, both in Yachats, are responding to the mandated statewide closure of restaurant in-dining facilities by initiating takeout and delivery services. If enough people decide to stay away by cancelling hotel and mote reservations, however, those efforts may be in vain.
“Under the circumstances, it’s really hard to tell whether people will come or not,” said Robert Anthony, Luna Sea’s owner. “We’ll just have to see.”
Added Drift Inn owner Linda Heltzer, “We’ve just had a slug of calls from people cancelling their reservations. “None of us has ever experienced anything like this.”
At Yachats Brewing + Farmstore, owner Nathan Bernard cleared his head for just a few minutes on a recent afternoon by heading out for a sun-splashed motorcycle ride. Upon his return, however, it was right back to bad news as usual.
“It’s hard to say what we can anticipate if this drags on and on for months,” Bernard said. “I’m a hopeless optimist, but this is still a very heavy situation to face.”
On Saturday, Yachats Brewing announced on Facebook it would be closing Sunday night until the outbreak was over.
Stephen King wrote the Stand decades ago and the spread of that virus is very similar to this. While this novel virus may not be as quick to kill as its novel counterpart, the rate of spread will be just as terrifying if left to the general population to self quarantine under suggestion.
The Governor did all these small motels, inns, and b&b’s a disservice by mandating that guests are not allowed to come there but not ordering a shut down, which might then open small business owners to disaster related unemployment or other forms of aid which will presumably be tied to whether a business is forced to close or not.
A large class of business was conspicuously left off the list.
Intentionally?
There is no aid didn’t you read the article?
The state is pinning it’s hopes in something coming from the feds.
Maybe they can look to the county for help🙄