April 8, 2020
COVID-19 INDUSTRY UPDATE #6
Week two of our stay-at-home order seems like week ten. Learning Zoom has become an important part of continuing to do business. Watching spring begin to bloom on short walks makes us anxious to get on with our lives. No matter how you slice this, it is not an easy road.
Being online right now is a way to stay home together through meetings, social media, photos, and virtual reality tours. We have added some
virtual tours to our website if you need to get away from all this for a while.
Our willingness to stay the course is what will define our country, states, cities, and towns. Our willingness to stay the course is what will keep our loved ones safe and alive. So, we all continue social distancing day after day because it’s the right thing to do.
Our staff continues to work remotely. Expect to hear from Georgia Stanley or Paula Fisher, who are busy contacting each of you to check in, let you know we continue to work for you and to ask you for a message for other members. We will be sharing that with you soon.
Our Finance Manager John Joyce is busy applying for the funding that applies to Destination Management Organizations. Claire MacPherson is bringing you this information as well as working on all our design needs and Tricia Ellis continues to update the website. You will soon see our Mini-Maps that Jack Girard has worked on. We are all anxious to see Jack open the Waterfront Visitor Center and Ted Curtin reopen the MA Visitor Center.
Tomorrow, we will hold our first Zoom PCDC Board meeting, as well as a DP Executive Board meeting. I will report back how that goes next week.
I continue to work with the MA Office of Travel and Tourism. We are hoping for an amendment from the legislature that will waive the matching funds we must raise to use our grant money. We also hope that we will get assurances that our usual grant amounts will be honored again in 2021.
As head of the Plymouth County Regional Tourism Council, I am actively working with the RTC marketing subcommittee presently crafting an ad campaign for the state. All the RTCs will coordinate local campaigns around it as we make decisions on when to begin doing a tourism campaign. I am also working with Plymouth 400 as new plans are made for the 400th anniversary. More on that later.
For this week’s update, I have included an article for restaurants about a free ServSafe food handling course that may help as you transition back to business. I have also included three graphs for hotels which show MA state levels in January and February occupancy, average daily rates, and revenue per available room values. I hope to have Plymouth County particulars by next week.
There are a few articles about tourism that are worth reading from a handful of publications, and as always, many links from the U.S. Travel Association with information that you will want to know about tourism and how it will recover.
The U.S. Travel Association is an important group to be affiliated with. It provides education, advice, lobbying efforts, and up to date news about the travel industry. As a member of See Plymouth, you have access to what it has to offer through our membership – yet another benefit of belonging.
Stay healthy,
Lea
