HANCOCK COUNTY — At Hancock County’s hotels, there are currently plenty of vacancies. Travel restrictions and recommendations to stay at home in response to the coronavirus pandemic have left many rooms empty.
John Dodrill, owner of the Super 8 motel in Greenfield, said his business has seen “massive cancellations.”
“About the only business that remains is people working in the area,” Dodrill said.
Dodrill said employees at the Super 8 are all healthy and the motel is taking “extreme precautions” in response to the virus. It’s important to keep the business running as close to normally as possible, he said, for the sake of people working in construction, trucking or other industries who will have nowhere to stay if it closes.
“We intend to stay open as long as we can, unless forced to close,” he said.
Hotels and motels are among the “essential” businesses that are allowed to remain open during the outbreak as outlined Monday, March 23, in an executive order issued by Gov. Eric Holcomb. Many are not sure how long they can hold out.
Dodrill is one of several hotel and motel owners who joined a meeting of the Hancock County Commissioners and Hancock County Council last week via remote call-in and asked if the county government would be able to offer any form of financial assistance to struggling businesses like theirs.
Dodrill suggested a suspension of the county’s hotel tax, a 5% fee paid by customers on hotel rooms. The tax funds the Hancock County Tourism Commission.
The commissioners said at the meeting that they did not have the legal power to suspend the tax.
Dodrill said he is hopeful that some help may come from the federal government. The American Hotel and Lodging Association asked the Trump administration for a $150 billion bailout on Tuesday, March 17, as major chains like Marriot began furloughing a majority of their employees.
Any aid that arrives, however, might not be enough, Dodrill said.
“I don’t see anybody stepping in and offering the massive help it would take to pay all of our bills,” he said.
The hospitality sector in Hancock County is significant. According to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, more than 2,600 people in Hancock County work at hotels and restaurants. With many restaurants closed or restricted to carryout and delivery service, an untold number of workers already have lost their jobs.
Brigette Cook Jones, executive director of the Hancock County Tourism Commission, said the commission is very limited in how it can use its funding. Only projects intended to bring visitors into Hancock County can be funded by the Tourism Commission, so the Commission does not have the option of providing emergency relief funds to Hancock County businesses.
And while hotels are mostly vacant, the Tourism Commission’s revenue will also be down.
“We’re going to have to curtail a lot of our spending, because our revenue is solely based on the innkeepers’ tax,” Jones said.
Jones said the Tourism Commission’s objective during the crisis will largely be to make plans for how it can promote Hancock County as a tourism destination once restrictions are lifted and people want to travel again.
Other local hotels have seen similar levels of cancellations. Vicki Clayborn, general manager of the Greenfield Hampton Inn, said the hotel was “operating as best we can” despite mostly standing empty.
“If this continues, we’re going to have to make some tough decisions,” she said.
Mohan Reddy is the owner of Star Group, which operates Greenfield’s Fairfield Inn & Suites and Holiday Inn Express. He said the decline in reservations over the past week had been precipitous. Greenfield’s hotel business depends on interstate travel and business trips, he said, and both are now largely shutting down.
“We lost about 90 percent of our clientele. The next couple of weeks don’t look any better — in fact, they look worse,” Reddy said.
Reddy was also hoping for government intervention and was concerned about what will happen to employees he can’t afford to keep paying.
“We have no money for payroll,” Reddy said. “We have no money for anything.”