HYANNIS -- While many Cape Cod businesses continue to face significant economic strain as the summer winds down, the outlook has improved since the spring and officials are hopeful a new marketing campaign will lead to a stronger autumn.
The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce launched an effort this week promoting a "Second Summer" on Cape Cod, urging potential tourists and visitors to take advantage of mild water temperatures, freshly harvested produce and widely available attractions during the fall season.
Chamber CEO Wendy Northcross told reporters Thursday that her organization has done fall marketing in the past, but this year -- as the region works to recover from the devastating impact of COVID-19 and months of forced business closures -- is the first time the "second summer" Cape-wide approach is being deployed.
"It is our second-most productive season to promote and talk about and offer up, so we're very pleased that we can this year," Northcross said. "If we ever needed it, this is the year that we needed it."
Early signs point to a fairly robust fall season unfolding amid the overall downturn. Some seasonal businesses that might traditionally close after Labor Day are instead planning to remain open until October or November, Northcross said, and the first two weeks of September are already "well booked" for lodging.
Part of that trend, she said, may be linked to COVID's impact on education: with a significant chunk of Massachusetts districts planning partly or fully remote learning this fall, some parents may opt to temporarily transplant their families to vacation spots without being concerned about students missing classes.
Other speakers on a Cape Cod Reopening Task Force said the region might also be home to more people this fall and winter than in previous years, due to more seasonal workers intending to remain for longer and visitors who are seeking stays later in the year.
"We expect to have a sustained population increase, I would say at this point through the winter, whether it be folks who have second homes here who are able to work remotely and are deciding to stay here remotely and also for our seasonal workforce," Sen. Julian Cyr of Truro said.
In July, Barnstable County saw 67 percent more single-family home sales than it did in July 2019, according to data published by the Warren Group. That increase far outpaced any other Massachusetts county.
Fall marketing campaigns have not always been an annual event because of budget constraints and state marketing grants sometimes arriving too late, Northcross said.
Cyr said he hopes the economic impacts of the pandemic prompt Beacon Hill to recommit to supporting the tourism industry, describing the pre-outbreak spending levels on tourism promotion as "a pretty paltry sum."
"I really think that coming out of the pandemic, we need to do a much better job here in Massachusetts in actually providing meaningful resources for tourism promotion," Cyr said. "We are getting walloped by our competitor states and localities. Frankly, it really shows the strength of what we offer in Massachusetts that we continue to have such a robust tourism economy with so little investment from the commonwealth."
"I would argue it's very classist as well," Cyr said. "It's very classist to spend $1 billion on biotech investment over a decade as the commonwealth did or hundreds of millions of dollars on corporate tax breaks for financial service organizations and spend so little money on tourism."
Massachusetts has reported the highest unemployment rate in the country for two months in a row, and Cape Cod businesses -- which rely heavily on seasonal travel -- were hit hard by the spring's mandatory shutdowns.
In an ongoing survey of employers the Chamber of Commerce and Cape Cod Commission are conducting, 52 percent of respondents said their revenues this year have dropped by about half and another 22 percent said their revenues dropped by more than three-quarters.
Still, officials said Thursday that the latest survey reflects improvement and signs of cautious optimism compared to the springtime peak of the virus.
About 35 percent of the 370 area businesses that responded to the in-progress survey projected that they can last for at most six months based on current cash flows and reserves. That rate, while still substantial, is down from the 45 percent who said they could keep operating for six months maximum in a similar April survey.
Nearly two in three now say they anticipate operations returning to normal in about six more months, a perspective that Cape Cod Commission Executive Director Kristy Senatori said Thursday is "a really positive sign for the region."
"As businesses are starting to reopen, there's a little bit more of a positive feeling in the community about business operations and continuity," Senatori said.