The city of Williamsburg depends on revenue brought in by tourist industries. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the outlook bleak as the winter months approach. The city’s leaders look for new ways to navigate limitations on outdoor gathering presented by cold weather and governmental restrictions.

If you take a stroll down Duke of Gloucester Street, things will almost feel like they did last year. Tourists wander  aimlessly around Colonial Williamsburg’s brick-laid paths with Kilwins ice cream in one hand and tourism brochures in the other. Quickly, however, you’ll find that Williamsburg’s tourists look a little different this year. 

Now, many of them walk down CW’s crowded streets, masked-up  to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which has paralysed the world since March. As the United States enters a third wave of infections, masks serve as a grim reminder of the eight million cases and two million deaths the world has seen this year from this novel virus. At a fraction of these numbers, the City of Williamsburg has had 210 cases and eight deaths so far. However, the new normal of  mask-clad people on the Duke of Gloucester Street only tells part of Williamsburg’s battle with the virus. From City Council’s small business grants to tourist industry employees concerned about losing their jobs, Williamsburg is bracing for the continued financial impact that the pandemic has caused.

Like many cities, data indicate that businesses in Williamsburg have taken quite the  hit from decreased revenue because of the pandemic. In a recent presentation to Williamsburg’s City Council, revealed that overnight visitation had decreased by 11 percent in July 2020, nearly eliminating the revenue for Williamsburg’s lodging establishment, in addition to other tourism businesses and restaurants being affected by decreased sales. 

As a result  of this trend, one of the City’s primary approaches has been providing financial assistance to local businesses and lodging establishments. Williamsburg was able to pursue this objective after receiving $2.6 million dollars in CARES Act funding, which arrived in two installments of about $1.3 million each. What Williamsburg did with the money was up to them, but it had two conditions: it must be related to COVID-19 relief, and it must be expended by Dec. 31st.

May 1st, Williamsburg launched its COVID-19 Business Grant Program, which closed on August 31st and funded 110 businesses. In July, Williamsburg started the CARES Act Community Block Grant, funding 57 businesses, with 30 applications still in the pipeline to receive potential funding. Oct. 8th, the City Council considered a Tourism Industry COVID-19 Relief Grant Program. For the latter agenda item,the tourism industry businesses are expected to  be awarded grants by Dec. 1st.

To qualify for grants, businesses must meet certain criteria, including being physically located in Williamsburg, having a Williamsburg business licence, being currently open and current on all taxes and payments to the city. If a business has a balance due, businesses can satisfy the balance with a grant award. Not all operations in the tourist sector can apply for a grant, however. For example, timeshares are not eligible. Similarly, there are additional requirements for restaurants and lodging establishments applying for a grant. Restaurants must have a narrative description of their COVID-19 resiliency efforts and lodging establishments must have a three-year business plan showing how they will continue their operations in the future.  

Caleb Rogers ’20, a recent College of William and Mary graduate who serves on city council, explained how the CARES Act money assisted in the City’s economic relief response. 

“I think we’ve done a very good job of empowering local business,” Rogers said. “That is, almost immediately right after March 11th, our Economic Development Office was regularly reaching out to businesses through all of their networks online and in-person asking them to track all of the losses that they had and asking them to reach out if they needed extra business assistance. And then, once we were given extra CARES Act funding, we were able to assist some of these organisations to the best of our ability. … Restaurants and lodging are some of our biggest business sectors here in Williamsburg, it’s really a part-education, part-tourism driven town so we want to make sure that that hospitality sector is empowered.” 

Rogers also explained how exactly the CARES Act funding was allocated through the grants.

“One of the ways we just recently did this with our second round of CARES Act funding — this $1.3 million — is establish two different grant funds,” Rogers said. “One of them is for lodging and one is for restaurants and they allow these organisations to apply for restaurants up to $5,000 in funding, but lodging more funding from $7,500 to $15,000, depending on how many rooms they have.”

In addition to grants for businesses, the City’s CARES Act funds  have gone to several other initiatives, including buying new chairs and tables to put in Merchants Square for outdoor dining and establishing financial assistance for outdoor-only events. 

According to Rogers, Williamsburg’s response to COVID-19 has stemmed from collaboration between the College, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and the Williamsburg local government. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, for example, provided assistance to the community by donating meals and working with human services to help provide housing to housing-challenged people. 

“They were donating meals upon meals, I mean literally thousands of meals, to Meals on Wheels for regular delivery to homeless people or families living in hotels regularly throughout those first months of the pandemic,” Rogers said. “… They were also assisting the City with some of the housing of housing challenged individuals in the Governor’s Inn, which is an old motel that is unused right now but is being used by some city assistance.”

Williamsburg has pursued unique approaches to tourism this year, since the industry typically significantly drives the local economy. Williamsburg’s tourism council, which is presided upon by the city council, shifted Williamsburg’s tourism message to a new campaign: “Life. At your own pace.” The goal with the new campaign is to still bring tourists to Williamsburg, but to shift marketing efforts to help do this safely. For example, a lot of the models on Colonial Williamsburg’s tourist campaigns now wear masks in their advertisement photos. 

“If people are wanting to travel, travelling to one of the nation’s biggest outdoor living museums is a good place to do so,” Rogers said. 

Although many tourist destinations and facilities are currently open, they are  making cuts where possible, including employment. Chris Wolinski ’19 remains furloughed from his part-time IT job at Busch Gardens. He received about a two-week notice from Busch Gardens that he was going to be furloughed, and while it is an uncomfortable situation, Wolinski said that being furloughed was better than the alternative — getting fired. 

“Everyone’s hurting pretty bad and at least they’re doing the responsible thing where they’re maintaining people furloughed, they’re not really letting people go,” Wolinski said. 

Busch Gardens is currently in the process of bringing back their full-time employees. 

“They have been trying to get their full time staff back on the clock instead of the part-time or seasonal people just because this is their primary livelihood,” Wolinski said. 

Like many tourism-related businesses in Williamsburg, Busch Gardens is implementing safety measures, like installing more hand sanitiser stations around the park, and keeping a six-foot distance between parties. But these measures, along with operating at limited capacity, create persistent concerns.

“Because of the way they’re doing lines, where you have to maintain a distance between everybody, that’s also caused them a couple problems,” Wolinski said. “Since they are also still limited by the capacity, they’re also still not able to have the entire park open because of that, so they’ve been limited and they’re just working with whatever they have.” 

However, Wolinski is not sure what the future holds for Busch Gardens. 

“Like Disney has recently said, all of these employees that are furloughed, we have to let you guys go,” Wolinski said. “So I know they’re at least doing right on the employees part for now, but there is only so much wiggle room they have.” 

Similarly, Emily Slack ’22 has a job in Merchants Square. Although she was worried about losing her job due to the pandemic, Slack and some of her friends who also work in Williamsburg were able to go back mid-May. Although internal safety measures were implemented at her job, adherence to face mask policies proved problematic. 

Under Virginia’s current executive order effective May 29,  people are required to wear face masks inside public facilities. Slack recounted how, unfortunately, a sizeable amount of patrons, particularly tourists coming into the store from Colonial Williamsburg, would enter without wearing masks. 

“Until there was the official sign out put up by the Virginia Health Department, people wouldn’t really follow that, which was a little stressful, made things a little bit more scary,” Slack said. “There has been a lot, just from what I’ve experienced working and being a local, there’s a lot of people still coming in for tourist activity, there’s a lot people still coming in who don’t think this is as serious as it, which is concerning. If Williamsburg was just another ‘small town,’ I don’t think we would have that issue as much, but because there is such a draw for tourism because of the College and Colonial Williamsburg it definitely makes things a little more stressful because there’s that aspect of the economy we’re looking at. Most of my friends are employed at some tourist-related job.”

Slack believes that now that tourists are coming in, most of whom she believes come from outside Virginia, the new concern is having them follow the rules. 

“Now that we are getting people coming in, how do we know that they’re going to do what the state of Virginia asks or that what individuals are asking them?” Slack said. 

Slack noticed that when College students started returning to campus in mid-August, she saw more people wearing masks in Williamsburg. However, she believes these were mostly students consistently wearing masks. 

Similarly, when asked about what Williamsburg could have done better in their COVID-19 response, Rogers said that mask-wearing could have been better. The streets near Duke of Gloucester Street are publicly owned, so it could not have been made a mask-required space. Rogers also said the city could have been more proactive in putting up signage about mask wearing.

The masks, required or encouraged, have changed the face of Colonial Williamsburg. To Slack, seeing the colonial reenactors  wearing their masks as they engage with tourists is among one of the most illustrative examples of how life has changed since the pandemic began earlier this year.

“It is really interesting, it’s kind of surreal. Because it’s that really weird mix of modern and historical,” Slack said. 

To make these masks, some of them are made using the same fabric that is used to create the colonial costumes. 

“They might be representing someone who has been dead for 300 years, but they still need the mask,” Slack said. “And they all match their outfits, it’s really coordinated.”

This fall, Williamsburg’s tourist industry will be more open than it was this summer. During the initial lockdown in March and April, many tourist activities and events were suspended or cancelled. For example, the Humane Society’s annual Fido Fest was cancelled, and Busch Gardens was closed for a period of time. However, this fall, Busch Gardens will still be having its Halloween festival this year, Colonial Heritage’s Harvest Festival will still be happening, and the Liberty Ice Pavilion in Colonial Williamsburg is still planned to open in November. 

But future closings and shutdowns are possible if COVID-19 cases increase in Williamsburg and the Hampton Roads area more broadly, and according to Rogers, the city might need another round of CARES Act grant funding.

Rogers also noted how in the coming months, people will be more indoors more often with a highly transmissible virus. 

“What does that mean for William and Mary, which has done a great job so far, in my opinion, of keeping its students safe, and keeping them on campus and keeping their classes to the best of their ability running. What does this mean for William and Mary as an institution, what does this mean for the City of Williamsburg and its employees in the Municipal Office? I’m not sure,” Rogers said. 

The future of Williamsburg, like many towns across the United States, remains unclear as the city prepares to navigate the virus during the winter season.