As if tourism during the coronavirus pandemic hasn't been dramatically curtailed, the second surge of COVID-19 currently plaguing most of the country is creating even more restrictions on traveling.
As many states again consider lockdowns, all eyes are now on California, where Gov. Gavin Newsome issued a regional 'stay-at-home' order imploring all residents to spend at least the next three weeks at home and banning non-essential travel into and out of the state.
That includes capacity restrictions on businesses - such as hotels, which can open "for critical infrastructure support only," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state's secretary of Health and Human Services, said the state is, in effect, telling, not asking, Californians to stop all nonessential travel. That includes canceling holiday travel plans, he added.
"The message of the day is, as much as you can, be at home," Ghaly told the paper. The stay-at-home order is not triggered in a county or community until a region's ICU bed capacity falls below 15 percent. Areas that were at risk of hitting the 15 percent threshold this week include Southern California, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area.
The 11-county Southern California region defined by the order includes Los Angeles, Imperial, Inyo, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
At the Hotel Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles, a spokeswoman told the Times that the hotel is "closely tracking & monitoring the new state limits and will remain open for essential persons, first responders, and booked-in hotel guests at this time."
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, nearly 40 percent of California jobs lost during the coronavirus pandemic are in the hospitality and leisure industries, and revenue from travel spending will fall by more than half this year, from a 10-year high of $145 billion in 2019 to about $66 billion this year. The downturn has also cost the state upward of 613,000 industry jobs - more than half of the 1.2 million tallied in 2019.
"It's nine times worse than 9/11," in terms of consumer spending, said Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of Visit California. "It basically pushed us back an entire decade."
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