Anthony Anton: Hospitality is where community happens, what our communities stand to lose

Apart from our heroic hospital and first-response workers who show up tirelessly and selflessly every day to care for those sickened by coronavirus, no service sector personifies the impact of the pandemic more than hospitality.

The widespread shuttering of local hospitality businesses – our central gathering places and meeting spaces, our community grounds for ceremony, commemoration and celebration – has brought home the fact that hospitality is the cornerstone of our community life.

Normal circumstances may have let us take this cornerstone for granted: We’ve come to rely on plenty of available options to host our festivities – a wedding or bar mitzvah, a graduation or quinceañera.

But we are far from normal circumstances, and the temporary closure of hospitality businesses gives us a harrowing glimpse of what our communities could look like once this pandemic subsides. Unless lawmakers take action to make it rational economically for our favorite local restaurants and bars, hotels and inns, breweries and coffee shops to remain in business.

Hospitality is where community happens. As the largest private employer in our state, the hospitality industry and the 296,600 jobs it provides also form the backbone of Washington’s economy.

Few sectors drive as much economic value through as far-reaching a web: We link sellers, farmers, distributors, suppliers and service providers, and more than 96 cents of every dollar spent in a hospitality business flows right back into the economy. More than one-third of our businesses are minority-owned, 40 percent of restaurant employees are minorities, and more than 60% of our businesses are women-owned or co-owned. In a single quarter in 2019, before the pandemic hit, restaurants and hotels were responsible for $3.5 billion in total sales in Washington.

While our value to the community and economy is our great strength, it’s also what’s made us more vulnerable than almost any other sector to the impacts of the pandemic.

And we have been hit the hardest. In March, hotels, inns and bed-and-breakfast homes lost an estimated $194 million in sales. Even though Gov. Jay Inslee didn’t close in-house dining in restaurants until March 17, restaurants still lost an estimated $404 million in sales. Our sector has almost 100,000 unemployment claims – well more than any other, even while many in our industry have not yet been able to file a claim, with benefits for part-time employees beginning next week.

Takeout and delivery can keep some restaurants on life support, but it’s not enough. Lodging businesses are nearly empty. Fixed costs don’t evaporate when revenue does. Ramping up operations after being shuttered will require a ramping up of costs – and restaurants and hotels will not quickly return to previous levels of business when the stay-at-home order expires.

In short, without support, this pandemic will cause hospitality businesses throughout our state to shut down – and cause our communities to become less vibrant and thriving, less social and connected as a result.

Yet, even while reckoning with these massive impacts, hospitality businesses across Washington are extending hospitality in new and needed ways by donating food and lodging – including hospitality for hospital workers.

It’s no stretch to say that if our sector is failing, so is the broader economy – and if our sector is thriving, so is the broader economy. At a time when economic stimulus is needed most, lawmakers should remember that stimulus happens through hospitality.

How can lawmakers help?

• Hospitality needs relief from – not deferment of – expenses, including tax and utility credits, and rent relief;
• New rules and requirements on hospitality must be deferred until businesses are returned to health, and new proposals that would further compound economic harm should be reconsidered;
• Stimulus funding to promote our state’s many great experiences and encourage Washingtonians to rediscover Washington when it’s safe to travel again.

What can you do?

• Let lawmakers know how important it is that they take the steps outlined above to save hospitality;

Click here to help our employees, who need support today;

• Once it’s safe to travel, take the opportunity to explore Washington and support our communities into recovery.

When the pandemic passes, Washingtonians will need our gathering places to be there for them.

With help from you and our state lawmakers, your favorite local businesses will be here to welcome you and the community, ready to serve.