An APR News Feature
Healthy Fourth of July tourism numbers could mean a good summer season for the Alabama Gulf coast. The Alabama Triple-A predicted 47 million Americans would hit the road over the Independence Day holiday. The state’s beaches were expected to see a lot of traffic. Despite all the rosy predictions, beachside businesses are still keeping their fingers crossed.
Alabama’s’ brisk Fourth of July is still leaving questions. Businesses that depend on summer dollars are wondering how the State tourism industry rebound after months of the COVID-19 pandemic. One concern is staffing issues in bars, restaurants and hotels.
“You know, our industry has been affected the most. It's been devastated,” David Clark said.
He’s the executive director of Visit Mobile, the city’s convention and visitors bureau.
“That's the bad news,” he said. “The good news is that it is thawing out. It's coming back, it's coming back very strong at that fact, it's bouncing back much more like a V curve than a U curve. So thank goodness for that.”
Tourism officials across the country were predicting it would take nearly four years for occupancy numbers to rebound to healthy 2019 levels. Clark and Visit Mobile wanted a better picture of what to expect locally. They hired the analytics firm Tourism Economics to study the trends. The final report says the Mobile area is actually performing better than expected.
“For the month of May, hotel-wide and citywide, we ran just over 70 percent occupancy. So that's awesome. We don't run many months ever above 70 percent,” Clark said.
In Gulf Shores, pleasure seekers appear back in droves and city officials are bullish about the future. They say visitor numbers started to rebound as early as last summer, and even set records. That was during Governor Ivey’s Safer at Home order. The year-old mandate required masks in public spaces. But on the heels of that summer upturn, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the beaches of south Baldwin County on Sep. 16. The storm packed 110 mile per-hour winds and nearly 30 inches of rain between Fort Morgan and Orange Beach. In Gulf Shores, that left 40 percent of hotel rooms and rental condos were left usuable due to storm damage. By spring of 2021, that number bounced back to 80 percent, and customers came running.
Grant Brown is the recreation and cultural affairs director for the city of Gulf Shores.
“We've had just a fantastic spring rolling into a very early busy summer, and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon,” he said.
He said occupancy was near 100 percent for the Fourth of July. The city is responded with road work to make future visits easier. A third lane being added to State Highway 59 leading into Gulf Shores. And bids are now being accepted to build a new bridge over the Intercoastal Waterway, adding a much-needed artery to Pleasure Island.
“We feel it, the residents here feel it, and we know that we're behind, but we're making good strides to fix some of those issues,” Brown said. “So you'll see a lot of that going on in the next couple of years.”
Outdoor activities were at a premium for families during the pandemic. Some cities chose to shut down their parks for safety reasons. The city of Mobile’s Parks and Recreation Department went a different route. They kept their green spaces open.
“COVID actually made us pivot, but actually look at things a little bit more creatively,” said Shonnda Smith, who directs the Mobile Parks and Rec Department. “Where we took a different standpoint that this was very important to health as physically, but also health mentally to be able to go outside. And so we actually encouraged people to go into the parks and be active in parks and to social distance.”
Mobile Parks and Rec oversees more than 70 locations across the Port City. Smith said that there was a very practical indicator that attendance was up at the city’s parks during the height of the pandemic.
“We realized that we were having to go to some of these facilities two and three times a week to pick up trash because of the active participations in the parks,” Smith said.
Open parks didn’t’ mean indoor recreation center stayed open. People who wanted to shoot hoops, play cards, or do yoga were largely out of luck. COVID-19 also prompted Mobile to hit the pause button on some larger citywide initiatives that were set to start last year. Those included “sip and paint” events for adults and live concerts and markets for families. Fourth of July fireworks weren’t the only thing going on at Mobile’s Cooper Riverside Park. The same manicured space hosted Saturdays at the Coop the day before. The free mixed-media celebration that will go on between now and September.
Tourism industry insiders said eager crowds and more and more fun things to do are great indicators of recovery for the tourism industry. Still, businesses need staff to accommodate the demand. That’s an issue in south Alabama, and nationwide. There are multiple reasons for the current labor shortage. The list includes low and non-competitive, entry-level wages. Another concern is pandemic-related aid for unemployed workers made available through the American Rescue Plan Act. In Gulf Shores, that shortage means fewer servers and cooks. It also means less warehouse and delivery staff up the supply line.
“The supply of goods seems to be fluctuating, where some days you'll have the ability to get all your product ready to be sold,” Brown said. “Other days you're waiting on delivery vehicles, and that product doesn't arrive. So you're not able to sell the items you don't have. So it's a little bit of a frustration. But the end result is, business is great, the demand is high and the people are here. And now it's just a matter of kind of catching back up the supply line and the employee situation to be able to satisfy the demand.”
At Visit Mobile, the labor shortage is seen as something that will undoubtedly have a negative impact on two key tourism metrics. Those are customer/guest satisfaction and whether these tourists plan to return and recommend Alabama’s Gulf coast. David Clark says there’s already a plan in the works to address the issue.
“We're joining our lodging folks right now. We started six weeks ago, developing an app and a website that's focused on promoting and connecting hospitality and tourism as a career. We're investing significant resources, and so hopefully in two or three weeks, it be a launched, it's an easy app that starts with lodging first,” Clark said.
That app is called Work in Mobile. It’s designed to connect would-be employees with a range of hospitality jobs, from dishwashers and housekeepers to bartenders, servers and sales managers. Prospective applicants can enter their information through the digital interface. Clark said the system then goes straight to the human resource departments at area hotels.
“Another thing about hospitality is you meet so many neat people. I've been in this business for 34 years and some of my best friends and great people of wisdom are the people that I've met where I've worked and, um, you know, you meet a lot of neat people, a diverse people, and you actually grow yourself as an individual because you're exposed to so many different people, from different walks of life. So, you know, it's very rewarding from that sense, from a cultural diversity sense to be in our business,” Clark said.
