Eric King, Bend City manager released an order Friday, “discouraging tourist travel” through the end of April.
It doesn’t outright outlaw it, however, nor does it pose any fines for violations, nor demand cancellations for current bookings. But for some locals, it’s just the type of direction around outside visitors that they’ve been looking for from local leaders.
“Owners and operators of temporary lodging facilities should not book any new reservations for tourist accommodation, and should only book reservations needed for health, safety or employment or other permitted essential travel,” read a statement sent March 27 by Anne Aurand, the City’s communications director.
Visit Bend is also on board. Since March 20, its homepage has read “Stay Home. Stay Safe. Your Bend vacation can wait.”
Meanwhile, the local hospitality industry has tanked.
Kevney Dugan, CEO of Visit Bend, told the Source that rental occupancy rates last weekend were at 15%, tops. Usually that weekend—which leads into spring break—has occupancy rates at 85 to 90%. He expects to see this weekend to drop into the single digits.
Now is not the time to risk community health for lodging revenue. We need to look after this community first. We want to be here and healthy when we get to the other end of this. – Kevney Dugan, CEO of Visit Bend
“Now is not the time to risk community health for lodging revenue,” Dugan said. “We need to look after this community first. We want to be here and healthy when we get to the other end of this.”
While VB does have a rainy-day fund, it’s almost 100% reliant on transient room tax revenues. Dugan sees Visit Bend playing a positive role at the end of the crisis by helping the hundreds of small businesses that rely on tourism in Bend to recover.
Dugan said the City Manager’s order has already become a useful tool for hoteliers and vacation rental managers to communicate with customers and explain their position.
The threat of viral transmission from visitors has led some people in Bend to lobby the City to shut down all accommodations businesses.
An article published March 24 in the Source titled “Point of No Return” drew six comments related to outside visitors. One reader, jp97070, cited a recent ruling in Palm Springs, California to place a moratorium on all lodging facilities. It forced hoteliers to cancel all reservations and tell their current guests to leave town.
Another comment by Sunshine1 read:
And this from Kevin Donnelly:
Tourism, hospitality and restaurants were the first to fall and may be the hardest hit of any industry as a result of novel coronavirus.
In 2018, there were 13,000 jobs at 720 individual businesses in Bend in the Leisure and Hospitality industry. That’s 8% of all businesses and nearly 16% of all jobs.
Not only do these industries depend on disposable income, but on the basic physics of people moving from place to place—both contingencies that are off the table for the coming months.
Meanwhile, last weekend (or was it last year?) people descended in droves into the scenic hotspots of Central Oregon. They flooded the trails and packed the State Parks. Many close friends of mine expressed disbelief at the crowds.
How was this possible, after so much messaging about maintaining distance from others?
Reprimanding memes accompanied by photos of overflowing parking lots from around the state made the rounds of social media. On Monday, March 23, Gov. Kate Brown expressed frustration at recent news footage of crowded beaches and parks and tightened up restrictions with a “Stay Home, Save Lives” order that shut down even more workplaces and recreation areas.
Where did all these people come from last weekend? The easy answer, of course, is to assume they were visitors from other towns, spring breakers, devil-may-care millennials who missed the memo that 40% of hospitalized coronavirus patients are people their age.
But another possibility is they were locals who usually work at restaurants and hotels on the weekends. Or maybe—with stricter lockdown orders looming—people were out having a last hurrah before becoming trapped inside the house for months at a time.
In a community so heavily dependent on outsiders, the devastating effects of social distancing has already crippled the local economy. Is hospitality and tourism just an easy scapegoat to unleash pent-up frustrations and fear about coronavirus? If so, they’re getting hit while they’re down, and the numbers demonstrate that not too many people came to Central Oregon last weekend.
Central Oregon and the entire U.S. has become one giant social experiment in the effectiveness of issuing orders and discouraging behavior. Forcing people to do things just seems so un-American. Is our society up to the task of voluntarily following the rules?
The recent non-essential travel order from the City, and Brown’s “stay home” order inch Central Oregonians closer to a time when we could start to get in trouble for leaving the house. (Technically, cops could arrest people right now—though Bend Police and the Deschutes County Sheriff have said they’ll do that only as a last resort.)
One of the gifts of living in Central is open space, without the crowded streets and subways that New York, one of the virus’ epicenters in the U.S., has. If nothing else, the chance to breathe in a little fresh air everyday may help keep us sane.
This article appears in Mar 25 – May 20, 2020.
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If this is such a problem, maybe make an agreement to open hotels for healthcare providers so they can keep doing their jobs without potentially infecting their families. We’re going to have to invest public money somehow anyway. This could solve multiple problems at once.
Thank you for this article, but it doesn’t go quite far enough. Many—if not most—VRBO’s or AIRBNB’s in Bend double as second homes for people who live in COVID hotspots such as Seattle, Portland or the Bay Area. Able to telecommute, I suspect many of them have fled to Bend to escape their respective hometowns and the escalation of COVID cases there (or plan to do so).
Bend is not alone in this. Towns on the Eastern Seaboard (see https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/ne…) and even in costal France
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/world/e…) are being invaded by these interlopers, who clean out the grocery stores and are lax in their social distancing. (If you’re skeptical that this is happening, take a trip around the packed parking lots of Costco and Safeway and count how many California and Washington state license plates you see.) Worse, they could be bringing coronavirus with them, spreading the pandemic locally and over-taxing our limited healthcare capabilities.
Our mayor and city council need to put a stop to this. They have access to the names and contact info of vacation rental permit holders and should contact them and tell them to stay home until the pandemic is over. If Ketchum and Coeur d’ Aline can put out word that owners of second homes need to stay away during this outbreak for the sake of year-around citizens, then so can Bend.
Widgi Creek Golf Club decided to reopen on Thursday.
The course has gotten more crowded each day and the situation is degrading daily.
6 carts on one hole seems like the distancing efforts are failing and endangering further spread among the community.
Be Patient. Flatten the curve.
My wife and I live just outside of Sunriver in a quiet neighborhood right on the big Dechutes river. We have 6 homes to the north of us, 3 are vacation rental, 2 are currently occupied and the other one which is right next door the renters moved out Saturday. According to the availability for these vacation rentals we have a lot more folks coming in the is spring and summer. We have people from all over the country visiting Bend with the majority visiting from Washington and California. Why are we allowing these business to stay open during a Pandemic. Others states are doing the responsible thing and shutting them down, why are we allowing them to stay open. Shame on the owners who are being irresponsible for keeping them open and being part of the problem. Please do the right thing and require them to shut down.
Hair and nail salons along with tattoo shops are all being hit the “hardest” as well. We depend on our clients to pay our bills. All of us are unemployed now.
Well,it sounds like Bend,the Central Oregon playground for the rich is really stressing out over the corona virus.All this time before the CoVID-19 virus hit,you should have been more proactive in building more affordable housing for the countless workers who work in Bend and could not find affordable housing there.But,they don’t count.You are more concerned about protecting Bend as a playground for the rich!And now you have to worry about the invaders from CA and other parts of OR who want to “invade” your little bit of heaven there in Central Oregon.Give me a break.
“Playground for the rich?”….. “Shame on you?”…….so much negative communication. Can’t we discuss without insulting?