This morning Maine Revenue Services released the statewide hospitality sales data for July. As expected it is poor with revenues off by approximately 30 percent for restaurants and 40 percent for lodging (see chart below).
This represents a slight improvement, by percentages, over June when restaurants were off 39 percent and lodging 62 percent. However, this hardly tells the full story. As we know July is much more important for Maine hospitality and tourism, therefore the numbers must be examined in real dollars. Losses in June were $187 million for restaurants and $57 million for lodging. Compare this to July where restaurants lost $253 million and lodging properties lost $146 million – a whopping $400 million in total losses for this month alone!
Back in June we released our first Covid impact report from University of Maine economic professors Dr. Todd Gabe and Dr. Andy Crawley that projected the full year impact on our industry. We expect version two to be released very soon and it will include both the June and July figures. We will share it with you as soon as its released.
Anecdotally, August seemed to be fairly strong for businesses across the state and September, while not as consistent, is seeing relatively good revenues, especially on the weekends. We continue our advocacy efforts on adding more exempt states, particularly Massachusetts, and on new protocols for indoor dining and meetings. We are expecting a timeline to be issued by the state very soon.