Vermonters will miss out on one of the state’s long-running fall traditions this year: the bus tours that carry thousands of people from elsewhere to view the foliage and experience the popular tourist attractions. And the impact of Covid-19 is already hitting fall 2021.
Some of the state’s best-known group tour destinations, such as the Shelburne Museum, the Ben & Jerry’s center in Waterbury, and the Vermont Country Store have either closed or have canceled all group tours this summer. Others are holding a limited slate of events, outside only.
Vermont’s four major tour operators, which handle travel arrangements from groups around the country, have seen their business all but vanish for 2020. And it’s not looking good for 2021 either, said Gwendy Lauritzen of Notch Above Tours in Colchester, who usually has about 50 such tours — not all in Vermont — booked more than a year in advance by the beginning of the summer.
But now? “Nothing,” she said of bookings for 2021. “I have some groups that canceled for this year who want to rebook for next year. But the uncertainty for the future and the media continually reinforcing the possibility of another outbreak in the fall, it’s got everybody in a state of panic.
“We don’t know what attractions are going to be open next year, we don’t know what the restrictions are going to be.”
The Quechee Gorge area sees 300 or 400 bus tours a year, down from 600 per year a few years go, said P.J. Skehan, executive director of the Hartford Chamber of Commerce. Skehan, too, has doubts that visitors will return for the 2021 tourist season. Many popular events are booked more than a year in advance.
The chamber in June canceled the Quechee Balloon Festival, which usually runs on Father’s Day weekend. They had rescheduled it for September, but ended up canceling altogether because of uncertainty. The event usually pays for 80% of the chamber’s annual budget, Skehan said.
Tour bus visitors usually buy lunch in town and shop at the gift stores, said Skehan. He doesn’t know of anyone making plans regarding 2021.
“Right now, our businesses are just trying to get open as best they can and survive this year, anyways,” he said.
Lauritzen has started working with two other Vermont operators — a fourth tour bus operator has closed up shop altogether for now — and said the state should be actively promoting tourism, not discouraging it with a mandatory quarantine for some out-of-staters and talk of a virus resurgence in the fall. She estimates bus tour companies carry 2,500 tourists to Vermont each year.
“Other states are sending email blasts and posting on Facebook that they are open and welcome the return of the motor coach travelers,” said Lauritzen. “We need to begin promoting to the group travel market immediately, as most groups reserve their trips at least one to two years out. We need to promote 2021 and beyond. It will take a long time for this market segment to recover and if we don’t start now to promote Vermont, it simply won’t recover in our state.”
The state is actively discouraging visitors to the state right now, other than those from certain Northeast counties with very low rates of Covid-19 infection. On Friday, state officials announced that people from as far as Ohio and Virginia will soon qualify for quarantine-free travel to Vermont if they are coming from counties with fewer than 400 coronavirus cases per million people. But lodging establishments and restaurants are also operating under strict capacity limits to suppress the spread of the virus.
It’s true that Vermont tourism businesses of all sorts have been closed or seen cancellations for summer and fall 2020 and 2021, said Tourism Commissioner Heather Pelham. The state’s economic recovery grants won’t be enough to replace all the revenue lost, she said.
“The Department of Tourism and Marketing is focused on what we can still do in 2020,” said Pelham, noting that almost 7 million people in 75 Northeast counties are now permitted to visit Vermont without a quarantine because their Covid-19 infection rates are low. With the expanded travel zone as of July 1, about 19 million people can visit without quarantining, according to state officials.
“We don’t have insights to fall 2021 other than to say this is an evolving situation, with conditions changing every day, and to predict a year out is hard,” Pelham said.
The American Bus Association, which does collect data on bus tours, said 6 million people go on such trips every year in the United States, spending an estimated 80 million nights in hotels and creating 2 million jobs. In Vermont, the bus tour industry supported 212 jobs and generated $10 million in wages in Vermont in 2018, the ABA estimated. Lauritzen said each tour group traveler spends about $100 per day on food, gifts and other items. The average number of tourists on a bus is 30.
Hildene, the popular former Lincoln summer home in Manchester, gets 40,000 visitors a year, including 100 tour buses, and had just started working with Chinese tour groups that carried visitors from both China and from the Chinese community in New York City, said Paula Maynard, who handles tour group visits for Hildene.
“It happened serendipitously after a few of them stopped by to visit once and fell in love with it,” said Maynard, adding that Hildene has always hosted Europeans, but didn’t see groups of Chinese visitors until last year. The Chinese bus tour market is huge, and she hopes to see those visitors return in 2021.
“I do believe they’ll come back to Vermont,” she said.
Hildene hosted 4,500 group tour visitors last year who brought in about $72,000, Maynard said, not counting museum store purchases. She added that many people have canceled 2020 tours and rebooked them for 2021.
Lauritzen said she and other tour operators have refunded thousands of dollars for summer and fall 2020 trips.
For now, Lauritzen is directing her efforts at getting the state to recognize bus tour companies as one of the tourism businesses directly affected by the pandemic, and hopes the Legislature will keep the tour companies in mind as it directs grants and loans to help those businesses.
Lauritzen said bus tour companies do more than transport travelers from out of state.
“We are the state’s sales force in the group travel market,” said Lauritzen. “We attend trade shows, make sales calls, send direct mail pieces and create extensive social media campaigns.”
