Flattening Visitation May Signal an End to the "Covid Crush"
The recent rapid growth in occupancy tax revenue has stalled and Forest officials and some downtown stores say traffic is down slightly. But business is steady, or even "going gangbusters."
CEDAR MOUNTAIN — Riding five miles on gravel roads in DuPont State Recreational Forest Thursday morning, I passed one runner, one state-owned pickup truck and not a single other cyclist.
On the Blue Ridge Parkway Friday, a riding buddy and I saw the usual crowds at the usual trailheads (Graveyard Fields) but at times felt like we had one of the country’s most famous and scenic stretches of asphalt all to ourselves — and then enjoyed a mostly peaceful descent down U.S. 276 through Pisgah National Forest. On Wednesday afternoon, though plenty of pedestrians wandered in and out of shops in downtown Brevard, I had my choice of more than a half-dozen empty parking spaces.
So, it wasn’t like downtown was dead or the forests deserted. They never are this time of year. They just didn’t seem quite as slammed as they did during the last couple of peak tourism seasons.
So is the so-called (at least by me) Covid Crush coming to an end? Maybe, said Clark Lovelace, executive director of the Transylvania County Tourism Development Authority.
After reaching record highs during the Covid-19 pandemic, occupancy tax revenues have flattened in recent months, he wrote in an email. Not falling, mind you, just no longer soaring.
“Through the first seven months of the fiscal year, July through February, occupancy tax returns were up 17 percent over the prior year (a record year),” Lovelace wrote. “However, for the subsequent three months, March through May, returns are up only one percent over the prior year.”
If you’ve been paying attention to trends in tourism — and considering its impact on the local economy, there’s good reason to — you can probably guess the causes.
Transylvania and many other outdoor recreation hubs across the country saw a flood of visitors seeking safe tourism destinations during the pandemic. As more options opened — even though Covid cases are again on the rise across the county and state —the number of people seeking out trails and trout streams has started to drop. High gas prices and inflation are probably also playing a part, Lovelace said.
Both Pisgah and DuPont are estimating that the number of visitors has declined slightly this year compared to last year. And the June traffic count on the Blue Ridge was down by 30 percent compared to the same month in 2020 at Balsam Gap, the closest measuring point to Transylvania.
“Some of the visitors who were newly interested in outdoor destinations due to the pandemic and are now resuming their normal day-trip and overnight travel,” Lovelace wrote.
Sharing our community is part of the deal of living in a place beautiful enough to draw large numbers of visitors. Even if we don’t directly rely on their income, making them feel welcome is just doing our part.
But there are also downsides to high visitation rates, including wear and tear on trails and short-term rentals that reduce the availability of units for permanent residents. And most people who move to the mountains do so to get away from people, or at least crowds. It defeats the purpose if the crowds follow you.
So I don’t think I’m alone in feeling it’s nice not to have to share quite so much. Even some entrepreneurs who benefit most from tourism feel that way.
“The short answer (about visitation trends) is, it’s a return to normalcy,” said Isaac Allen, of White Squirrel Realty, who manages dozens of vacation rentals in the county.
“I think we saw a lot of growth those two years we had Covid and now we're back to sort of where we should have been.”
He sees the diminished demand in the prices for stays at his clients’ properties — currently down about 13 percent compared to the same time last year.
“When you see rental rates on hotels or short-term rentals go up by 25 percent year over year, that’s not really sustainable,” he said, speaking of the recent Covid-19-fueled boom. “If we have retracted by 13 percent, we’re probably right where we need to be in terms of a comfortable supply-and-demand situation.”
Steady — or even Booming — Business
It would not be the right place to be if downtown businesses were suffering. As I said, we’re all invested in their success. But most of the business owners I interviewed said they’re doing fine — some of them more than fine.
The general trend reported by retailers in town, Lovelace said, is that revenues are steady despite a slackening of foot traffic.
That’s exactly what Dee Dee Perkins has seen at D.D. Bullwinkel’s Outdoors, her camping gear and clothing store on East Main. Year-to-year customer counts were down by 30 to 60 percent for some days earlier this year, she said, and have returned to last year’s high levels in July, which, along with December, is typically the store’s busiest month.
But she has seen revenue growth from last year, she said. Maybe it’s because fewer visitors to her store are there to browse, and more of them to shop. It’s also due to an easing of Covid-19-related impediments to the supply chain.
“We were really scrambling to find merchandise last year,” said Perkins, a TDA board member. It especially impacted business at her Moose Tracks Footwear store, nestled inside Bullwinkel’s. “Nobody could get shoes.”
Business at her Rocky’s Grill & Soda Shop, on North Broad Street, “was pretty flat in May and June,” Perkins said, though “July has been really strong.”
She added that, like many restaurants in town, Rocky’s continues to be hampered by a lack of available workers. Staffing shortages, she said, have forced her to close Rocky’s two days a week.
Highland Books has benefited from a broader resurgence of independent bookstores, said owner Leslie Logemann, who found time to field questions only during a brief lull in the line of customers at her cash register Wednesday afternoon.
“During the pandemic, people became very loyal to their local bookstores,” she said. Customers like “to see, read and explore” books before they buy, she said, and appreciate guidance from her staffers, who “like to read, are good at recommendations and have a passion for books.”
The business has been growing ever since she bought it in 2021, she said, and is now “going gangbusters.”
John Taylor, owner of O.P. Taylor’s, is also bucking trends — the growth of online shopping and the preference for virtual rather than tangible sources of fun.
His Brevard, Hendersonville and Greenville, S.C. toy stores, he said, are all “doing a screaming business.”
High gas prices may even be helping, he said, because people from nearby cities are choosing to visit Brevard rather than more distant destinations. Taylor, who also owns seven short-term rentals, said these are fully booked, and have been since the start of the year.
“What a cash cow that is,” he said.
Matt Huggins, of The Brown Bean Coffee Roaster, is the only owner of a downtown enterprise interviewed to report a decline in sales, though only “a little.”
“I haven’t looked at any concrete numbers but (this year) seemed like it started slower,” he said. “The last couple of years during Covid, travel restrictions were a lot tighter and I think there are more options for people. People are more willing to fly.”
The Heart of Brevard, a nonprofit that promotes downtown preservation and enterprise, reported continued strong public and private investment in the district, according to statistics for the recently ended fiscal year provided by Executive Director Nicole Bentley.
The group also found that 75 percent of the businesses surveyed in the district had reported either steady or improving revenue during the fiscal year.
That period included the last six months of calendar year 2021, which saw a boom that might skew the picture of other years.
“It’s very hard to compare . . . Last year was such an outstanding year,” she said. “Once regulations were lifted folks were ready to get out of the house, travel and spend money.”
“There may be fewer visitors than we experienced last year,” Bentley said in agreement with Lovelace, but revenues appear to be holding steady. “Anecdotally, I hear that a lot.”
So feel free to enjoy the relative peace and quiet. For those of us who live here year round, it’s nice to have a forest road pretty much all to yourself, as I did on Thursday.
It’s nice to see deep woods and clear rivers and roadside banks covered with brilliantly green ferns. And not too many people.
Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com
We were in Brevard last week, visiting family. It’s great to see the changes - mostly for good - and everywhere we went we had a warm welcome.
Well covered and written, as are all of your articles. Excellent coverage versus the now watered-down hard news and local personality coverage published by the hedge-fund owned Transylvania Times. I have to chuckle, though, wondering what long-time county natives think of this year being characterized as returning to more “normal”, that is, in terms of the number of people, the traffic, frequent sirens, pot-holed roads, lack of accessible housing, etc., compared to years past.