by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 9:00 PM ET, Wed August 16, 2017
The Missouri travel advisory issued last month by the NAACP is already being felt by the state's tourism industry.
The president of Explore St. Louis said in a statement Monday that hotels have reported canceled bookings.
"We have been notified by a number of area hotels that they have lost meeting groups that were in contract phase," Kathleen "Kitty" Ratcliffe, president of Explore St. Louis, said in a statement reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We've also been working with a number of organizations that are already contracted to help them address any concerns that they have had expressed from their attendees."
There is no indication of how much business has been lost due to the advisory. A spokesman for Explore St. Louis said the agency does not have permission from hotels to release such information, according to the report.
The NAACP's travel advisory was issued after the state passed a bill making it more difficult for employees to prove racially motivated workplace discrimination. The advisory cautioned African Americans traveling to or through Missouri to do so at their own risk. The organization cited "looming danger" stemming from Senate Bill 43, which it called a "Jim Crow Bill."
A first of its kind for the NAACP, the advisory has met with both praise and criticism.
Local lawmakers and the state's governor say the bill brought Missouri in line with 38 other states and the federal government in terms of the language they have in place with regard to workplace discrimination.
[READMORE]READ MORE: NAACP Issues Statewide Travel Advisory for Missouri[/READMORE]
The NAACP however, said it felt it had no other alternative but to issue the warning.
"We tried to talk with legislators. That didn't work. Talk with the executive branch. That didn't work. Offer amendments (to the bill), and that didn't work. There was no other recourse but to tell people that if coming here, be careful and know what you are coming into," Rod Chapel, head of the Missouri NAACP, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Chapel said the new law requires plaintiffs to meet a higher standard of proof in discrimination suits and expands the state's institutionalized racism.
Missouri has undoubtedly struggled with racial challenges, most notably Ferguson in the summer of 2014.
Those critical of the new travel advisory say it's partially based on legislation that has nothing to do with travel. There's also concern that the advisory will bring economic harm to people of color in Missouri if tourism declines as a result.
Still, by some measures, the advisory has put the rest of the country on notice.
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