Even with Georgia fully open for business, tourism and travel numbers are still not back to normal heading into Memorial Day Weekend – typically one of the busiest travel holidays of the year.
While weekend travel is expected to be up 60 percent over 2020, obviously a record-low year, AAA estimates that there will be some 6 million fewer Americans hitting the road than in a pre-pandemic year. The American Hotel and Lodging Association, headed by former Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, continues to push for federal aid as the industry recovers, calling on Congress to pass the Save Hotel Jobs Act.
Meanwhile here at home, state officials recently announced $1 million in grant funding for tourism marketing to go along with its ‘Ready. Set. Georgia.” tourism campaign. Georgia has managed to post much better hospitality numbers than the national average by virtue of opening back up earlier during the pandemic.
Indeed the industry has already recovered 144,000 of the 223,000 jobs lost to the pandemic by March of this year, according to numbers from the Georgia Department of Labor. Tourism is expected to return to near-normal numbers by the end of the summer, and a full recovery in 2022.
The area though where the hospitality is really hurting is in business travel, which is down a staggering 85% and is taking longer to recover than tourism. With many businesses going remote and conferences going virtual, that spells bad news for cities like Atlanta and Savannah which are major players in the national convention scene. Many of those conventions were not rescheduled until later in 2021, which will also see major events like the annual Chick-fil-A Kickoff games at full capacity filling up hotels around the city.
So if you don’t yet have travel plans this summer – make some, the state needs you to get out and vacation!
