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California tourism leaders outlined some high-level damages to the state’s travel economy stemming from the coronavirus pandemic to industry leaders Thursday morning.
They reported that about 518,000 leisure and hospitality workers lost their jobs, and tourist spending tanked by $86 billion in 2020, “erasing a decade of growth,” said James Bermingham, board chair of Visit California, the state’s tourism bureau, addressing an industry forum via Zoom. In 2019, the sprawling industry, which covers venues ranging from state parks to movie theaters, supported about 1.2 million jobs and generated $145 billion in visitor spending.
Bermingham also noted that state and local tourism-related hotel and sales taxes plunged from $12.2 billion in 2019 to $5.9 billion last year.
“This is a long-term threat,” Bermingham said. “With coronavirus continuing to plague the industry, we do not expect visitor spending to return to 2019 levels until 2024.”
The latest figures come from an economic analysis due out in May and paint a grim portrait of the pandemic’s massive impact on California, which had been the country’s most robust tourism economy from 2009 to 2019.
In the past year, travel to the state has cratered, residents continue to grapple with the deadly virus and the reports flow in of an exodus of residents to other states and Bay Area counties. Amid those rapid changes, Visit California is confronting the broader effect of negative publicity on the state’s reputation resulting from wildfires ravaging the landscape, the astronomical cost of living and tech companies relocating to tax-friendlier states.
“Has California lost its luster? Does the world believe it has?” Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of Visit California, said during the digital forum.
Last year, Beteta observed that “leakage” of prospective California tourists — people who opted to travel instead to states with more lax COVID-19 restrictions — cost the state $2 billion in spending.
“It was an economic dagger,” she said.
The bureau has been calling on Californians to help the state recover by traveling and recreating locally. (The state’s current travel advisory urges people not to travel more than 120 miles from home.)
To drive home the point, actor Kevin Costner appeared in a prerecorded video message at the forum.
“To live here is to understand why people have never stopped coming,” he said. “I know it’s been a tough and tragic year. It’s affected all of us.
“Keep dreaming because … if you rebuild it, they will come.”
Gregory Thomas is The Chronicle’s editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @GregRThomas
