You can understand why Julie Schmitz Jensen is nervous these days.
You can also see why she sometimes uses CAPS and exclamation points in her emails on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which are being felt in the Black Hills tourism industry even though western South Dakota hasn’t had a confirmed case of COVID-19 that originated here.
“Absolutely, the visitor industry is seeing impacts!” Jensen said. “One hotelier told me on Friday morning that his property had already lost $30,000 in March alone. And, this was BEFORE all the state basketball tournaments were cancelled. One very large convention cancelled its early April convention at another property. I’ve tried to keep our industry calm and have encouraged facts v. fear, but these kinds of cancellations are going to start coming in BIG!!”
So far, South Dakota has missed the worst of the impacts of the coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease in produces. As of Tuesday, there had been 10 confirmed cases of the illness in the state, all of them tied to travel outside the state. There was no confirmation yet of community spread within the state.
But one of the victims died. And he was a resident of Pennington County. The man, in his 60s with pre-existing medical conditions, had been in Florida and had flown back into Sioux Falls. He died in Mitchell hospital after attempting to return to the Black Hills.
According to Gov. Kristi Noem, the man had not been in Pennington County during the two weeks prior to his death.
That’s important information to remember. It’s not nearly as important as the loss of the man, the grief suffered by his family or the need to protect state citizens from being infected or spreading the virus. But tourism matters to the economy of the Black Hills and Rapid City, which matters to the state economy, which matters a lot.
As president and CEO of Visit Rapid City, Jensen tries to remind people of that and focus on ways to protect people while limiting the inevitable financial damage to tourism in Rapid City and beyond.
“The impact financially on hotels, restaurants and all the businesses which serve and supply them is going to be devastating,” she said. “And, the employees – it breaks my heart – because so many work paycheck to paycheck.”
With facilities like the YMCA and the Rapid City Public Library closed for now, major events either postponed or canceled and federal, state and local officials calling upon people to practice “social distancing” and limit their time and numbers together, the customer flow for many businesses has fallen sharply.
Some customers are ordering take-out meals to help restaurants and lounges who are seeing sit-down clientele disappear. And Jensen said promotion efforts by the city has changed to match the situation but haven’t been suspended entirely.
“We absolutely are listening to the medical experts and scientific evidence,” Jensen said. “We are NOT wasting our financial resources on doing a huge marketing campaign!! We are not pulling ALL our marketing efforts but have reassigned most dollars to our drive market instead of our fly market.”
International marketing efforts have been suspended for now, Jensen said. But it’s better for tourism that the shutdowns and postponements and concerns hit now instead of in May, when the main tourism season is just beginning, she said.
“Hopefully, this will be resolved by the experts sooner rather than later,” Jensen said. “If social distancing continues to be encouraged, we still are a perfect place to come explore the outdoors — hike, fish, camp, rock climb, etc. Our campaign will focus on the things which seem the safest to do.”
And she’ll be waiting and watching, with CAPS and exclamation marks ready, to proclaim the passing of the pandemic and the return of full tourism flows to the Rapid City and the Black Hills.