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The hotel and tourism industry is one of Massachusetts’ biggest employers and sources of tax revenue, but a $100 million aid package proposed by Gov. Charlie Baker has met with silence on Beacon Hill.
As hotel owners and operators across Massachusetts struggle to stay afloat, it’s a fair question to ask whether the top legislative brass on Beacon Hill care all that much about the industry and the vital tourism sector it supports.
New York is pumping $200 million into efforts to retain and recruit new workers for the state’s beleaguered tourism industry, topped with a $25 million “I LOVE NY” marketing campaign to bring tourists back and fill empty hotel rooms.
Virginia and Florida are spending tens of millions on their own efforts to market their states to the travel- and vacation-hungry masses as the pandemic, still a huge problem, is at least simmering at more manageable levels.
So far, the Bay State’s biggest move has been to boost funding for the Massachusetts Office of Tourism and Travel back up to the $10 million range, a number that restores millions after some deep cuts but is still below what it was just a few years back.
And there are no signs at all of the big guns like the ones other states have rolled out.
“Time is going by very quickly,” said Paul Sacco, president of the Massachusetts Lodging Association. “You have to be out there marketing yourself and other states are.”
$100M Idea, Withered on the Vine
It’s only fair, though, to place blame where it belongs, and, in this case, with Massachusetts’ top two legislative leaders, both Democrats, playing the role of the cheapskate and taking for granted one of the state’s most reliable cash cows.
Unveiling plans over the summer to spend billions in federal relief dollars, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker proposed setting aside $100 million to boost the state’s flagging hotel and tourism sector.
However, there is no sign of Baker’s proposal has since vanished inside the black hole otherwise known as the Massachusetts legislature, one of the least transparent in the country.
Sure, lawmakers from regions that really depend on tourism to pay their bills, like the North Shore and Cape Cod, pushed hard for an increase in funding, but it clearly wasn’t enough to sway either House Speaker Ron Mariano or Senate President Karen Spilka.
Given the fact the money wouldn’t come from state taxpayers, the reluctance to even throw a few million dollars at the governor’s proposal is truly confounding.
Well, maybe Mariano, Spilka and their underlings should look at little closer at the financially precarious situation one of our biggest economic engines and employers finds itself in as the pandemic drags on.
If they did, they might loosen the purse strings a bit a spring for a decent marketing campaign to boost tourism and put heads on beds in hotels across the state.
Hotels Need a Bridge to the Future
The good news is that occupancy – the percentage of rooms filled at hotels in Boston/Cambridge market – has rebounded in 2021 and is 60 percent over dismal 2020, according to Pinnacle Advisory Group.
The bad news is that recovery only brings the total occupancy rate for Boston-area hotels to 41 percent, up from 2020’s 25.7 percent.
Next year promises to be better, with a return to a more healthy 66 percent occupancy rate, with corporate travel expected to make a comeback and taking some of the heavy lifting off the tourism and leisure market.
Scott Van Voorhis
But hotels in Greater Boston and across the state will first have to make it through the next several months on current demand, with some smaller establishments just hanging on, noted the Lodging Association’s Sacco.
That’s where the Baker administration’s proposed $100 million lifeline was to have come in, paying for both ramped-up marketing of Massachusetts as a vacation destination, while also providing cash to keep hotels on the brink from closing, according to Sacco.
However, with the governor’s proposal have gone missing at the State House, seemingly consigned to either Spilka’s or Mariano’s circular file, we could be looking at a pretty grim winter for Bay State hotels.
“’20 into ’21 has been incredibly tough,” Sacco said. “That’s just not limited to Boston and Cambridge, but throughout the state is has been terrible. We lost all markets.”
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
