Business and leisure travelers are putting the pandemic in the rearview mirror and once again are filling Virginia hotels and resorts. While that’s good news, widespread staffing shortages continue to hamper the hospitality industry.
Occupancy rates are almost back to 2019 numbers, with Northern Virginia finally seeing upticks as corporate and government travel has slowly returned, says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association: “Hotels have recovered nicely from the pandemic, but labor is still a significant challenge.”
Most hotels are short-staffed, Terry adds, and many have cut back on daily housekeeping services and other amenities. “Some hotels won’t book all of their rooms because of staffing.”
Meanwhile, continuing a growing trend over the past decade, few full-service hotels offering large-scale meeting space are under construction. Instead, smaller select-service properties with limited amenities are sprouting up across Virginia. “It’s hard to make the economics of a full-service hotel make sense,” Terry says.
Kalahari Resorts and Conventions aims to buck that trend. The Wisconsin-based developer of America’s largest indoor waterparks plans to build its fifth location on 140 acres in Spotsylvania County just north of Kings Dominion. Projected to open in 2028, the hotel-convention center will include a 12-story, 900-room hotel, entertainment complex, convention center, indoor water park and 10-acre outdoor water park.
Other hospitality happenings from around the state include:
Central Virginia
Following an extensive, two-year renovation, the Keswick Hotel reopened last fall in eastern Albemarle County. The 1912 property was expanded to 80 guest rooms and suites, with a building added for the new restaurant, Marigold, under the direction of French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. A new spa opened this fall.
In the state’s capital, Marriott’s new lifestyle brand, targeted to Gen X and millennial travelers, made its debut this fall in the form of Moxy Richmond, one of Shamin Hotels’ properties. Moxy Hotels are known for offering guests a fun, lively atmosphere for working and socializing. The eight-story hotel at Fifth and Franklin Streets includes 87 rooms featuring folding chairs and tables that can be hung on a peg wall when not in use.
Downtown Roanoke’s first boutique hotel, The Liberty Trust, is in a 1910 building that previously housed First National Bank. Photo courtesy The Liberty Trust
Hampton Roads
Embassy Suites by Hilton Virginia Beach Oceanfront, the last piece of the Cavalier Resort redevelopment project, is scheduled for completion in early 2023. The 157-suite hotel will be one of only 12 Embassy Suites by Hilton nationwide to receive the brand’s resort designation. Each suite will have panoramic views of the coastline. The hotel will have 10,000 square feet of meeting and event space, accommodating up to 300 people.
Developed by Gold Key | PHR, the Cavalier Resort includes the historic Cavalier Hotel and Beach Club and the Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront, offering 547 guest rooms and more than 40 meeting and event spaces.
Yorktown’s 58-year-old Duke of York Hotel is now the Yorktown Beach Hotel. The property was sold for $3 million in summer 2021, closed for renovations in early 2022
and reopened this spring. Upgrades to the hotel’s 57 guestrooms are scheduled to begin this fall.
Northern Virginia
A $10 million renovation to the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center was finished in May, including upgrades to meeting spaces and its 428 guest rooms. The hotel offers more than 48,000 square feet of event space with 37 meeting rooms.
Renovations were completed this summer at the Archer Falls Church, located in the Mosaic retail and entertainment district in Fairfax County. The property had been a Hyatt House before Archer took over in December 2021. The 148-room hotel has 3,225 square feet of meeting and event space.
The Hotel AKA Alexandria is scheduled to open this winter in Old Town Alexandria in space previously occupied by a Holiday Inn Express. Billed as luxury long-stay hotels, AKA properties were started by the fourth generation of the Korman family, commercial real estate entrepreneurs over the past century. The 178-room hotel will have six meeting rooms, including a 5,304-square-foot conference room for total event space of 10,500 square feet.
Roanoke
Downtown Roanoke’s first boutique hotel, The Liberty Trust, opened in March in a restored 1910 Greek revival building that previously housed First National Bank. Fairfax-based Savara Hospitality redeveloped the seven-story, 54-room property that features the bank’s original copper doors, as well as a walk-in vault that has been transformed into the Tasting Room bar. The hotel’s mezzanine boardroom has 400 square feet of meeting and event space.
Shenandoah Valley
Opened in 1766, the 2,300-acre Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs is in the midst of its most significant upgrade in more than a century. The $140 million-plus facelift kicked off last fall with façade improvements. Interior work, including revitalizing the 483 guest rooms, public spaces and restaurants, began this summer.
Plans call for expanding the lobby bar into the Georgian Room, reconfiguring Martha’s Market to maximize efficiency, revamping the 1923-era theater and refreshing each of the 28 meeting rooms, which collectively offer 72,000 square feet of capacity. The resort’s Great Hall also will be updated with custom carpeting and lighting reflecting the Homestead’s bucolic surroundings. Renovations are expected to be finished in 2023.
The revitalized décor will reflect the resort’s history and the natural beauty of the Allegheny Mountains, says Lynn Swann, the Homestead’s director of marketing and communications. “The plans pay tribute to the resort’s history and traditions and pull in the flora and fauna of the area.”
In addition, the $4 million restoration of the Homestead’s Warm Spring Pools is expected to be complete late this year. (The nation’s oldest spa structures, the warm spring pool’s bathhouses date to
the 1700s.)
Less than one mile from James Madison University, the Hyatt Place Harrisonburg opened in December 2021 with 119 rooms and 1,977 square feet of meeting space. The establishment is the only hotel in Harrisonburg with a rooftop bar.
Southwest Virginia
Nicewonder Farm & Vineyards in Bristol expanded into lodging when it opened the Nicewonder Inn in April. The 28-room luxury boutique inn takes advantage of the venue’s culinary and wine program.
This article has been corrected since publication.
Like the proverbial canary in the mineshaft, the state of the meetings and convention planning industry is a good barometer for predicting how well the economy is doing and what direction it is moving.
Despite the persistence of COVID-19 variants, the canary is still singing a happy tune — as are meeting and convention planners throughout Virginia who say they are pleased with what they are seeing.
“After three years of canceled and rescheduled meetings, organizations want face-to-face meetings, and demand is up,” says Christi Ruddy, manager of Covington Meetings and Events, a division of Richmond-based Covington Travel.
Steve Tewksbury, executive director of university events at William & Mary and president of the Virginia chapter of Meeting Professionals International, agrees with this assessment.
“In 2022, meetings seem to be booking with venues in the very short term, sometimes within weeks between a signed contract and the event,” he notes. “We’re [also] seeing meetings and conventions bookings rising well into 2023 and 2024.”
Ruddy and other colleagues in Virginia note that although prices for all meeting services — including airfare, hotel rooms and ground transportation — have risen with inflation rates, industry analysts and businesses report they are seeing a rise in bookings for 2023-24.
The Omni Homestead Resort, one of the state’s mainstays for large professional conventions, has seen improvement in long-term and short-term reservations, says John Hess, director of sales and marketing.
“We are very encouraged by the increase in leads and bookings for meetings and events,” he says. “While interest in 2024 and 2025 has grown considerably, we’ve also noticed an uptick in short-term group bookings.”
Also, Hess notes, “In September, we hosted around 30 meeting planners from around the mid-Atlantic region, and they too had a positive outlook on the future of the industry.”
The biggest challenge confronting the hospitality industry these days is staffing. Many senior staffers left the industry during the start of the pandemic and sought other employment, and so far, employers have had a hard time replacing them.
The Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs has seen an uptick in short-term bookings and longer reservations. Photo courtesy The Omni Homestead Resort
Tewksbury says that even though there are staffing shortages, he has great hope for the future of young people entering the industry.
“I am very encouraged by many Virginia universities that are offering world-class hospitality management programs. Virginia’s community colleges are also offering outstanding courses in culinary arts and business management skills to help train or retrain workers looking to start or to advance their careers in the meetings industry,” Tewksbury notes.
Graduates of Virginia’s colleges and universities will be entering into a career field, he says, that is “ripe with opportunities to gain expertise from the bottom up and in many cases experience rapid career advancement, particularly for those who bring valuable technical skills, a strong work ethic and a gracious customer service approach.”
As year three of the pandemic ends, COVID has remained an issue but is no longer the only factor governing work-related travel.
“We’ve just had to adapt and accept,” Ruddy explains. “COVID precautions,” she says, are part of the job, part of “risk mitigation process.”
“At least now, we have a better idea of what to expect,” adds Marty Malloy, principal and co-founder of Henrico County-based Convention Connections Inc., which plans conventions nationwide.
Conference attendees really want to get back together and meet face-to-face again, he says. “We are experiencing strong demand as our clients are all hosting their conventions and conferences again. All of our clients have exceeded expectations with regard to attendance this year. We believe we will be back to pre-pandemic numbers in 2023.”
Malloy and Ruddy each explain that hybrid meetings are a great safety net but cost more.
“Basically, you need to plan two events: one for in-person, one for an online audience,” Ruddy says. “Make sure to consider engagement for online. The production element, including audiovisual and staff, is expensive.”
The industry is rebounding, Tewksbury says, and the future looks great for those interested in careers in conference and meeting planning.
“In addition to the traditional skillsets required for the meeting and planning industry, those considering entering the field need to come with increased technology skills to assist the planners and anticipate future needs of clients,” he says. “This is a great time to be someone entering the industry.”
Northern Virginia’s hotel market continues to be a drag on the lodging industry’s performance in the commonwealth as a whole, according to recently released data from STR Inc., a division of CoStar Group Inc. that provides market data on the U.S. hospitality industry.
The latest data show rooms sold decreased by 4.6% in Virginia through July 2022, compared with 2019, remaining consistent with June of this year. The average daily rate (ADR) paid for hotel rooms through July was $120, a 5.6% increase compared with 2019. Revenue per available room (RevPAR), an industry standard of the health of the lodging sector, was $74 and was 0.2% lower compared with 2019.
“Room rates gave gone up dramatically,” said Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging and Travel Association. Hotels are having to compensate for increases in the cost of labor and other expenses, he added. “We’ve actually got a much higher room rate than what what we typically would be, especially down at the beach areas and whatnot. I think it’s just indicative of what the industry has [needed to do] to adjust.”
The three largest markets in the state are Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and Richmond. Together, they generated about 77% of the commonwealth’s hotel revenue in 2019. Hampton Roads’ room revenue in the first seven months of 2022 was 20.2% higher than during the same period of 2019; Richmond’s was 10.2% higher; and Northern Virginia remained down by 22%. Overall, hotel revenues for the commonwealth through July are o.7% higher than during the same period in 2019.
“Essentially, the Northern Virginia market, which accounted for 43% of the revenue generated in the commonwealth in 2019, is responsible for the lackluster performance through July 2022,” Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy said in a news release Friday. Terry, ODU and hospitality experts have attributed this to the fact that business travel, which accounted for much of the Northern Virginia hotel market’s pre-pandemic business, still hasn’t returned to 2019 levels.
While revenues may be up in some markets, rooms sold, however, continued to show declines from July 2022 compared to 2019. In Northern Virginia, rooms sold decreased by 18.1%; they decreased by 6.7% in Bristol, Virginia, and by 6.9% in Roanoke. Lynchburg saw the largest increase at 11.4%, followed by Staunton/Harrisonburg at 7.9%, Blacksburg at 6.4% and Richmond at 1.3%.
Blacksburg, Lynchburg and Hampton Roads saw the largest increases in percent change in total room revenue at 22.9%, 20.3% and 20.2% respectively.
“The normal pattern is that occupancy goes up first and then your room rates go up after that,” Terry said. “This time … your room rates go up first and then your occupancy. … It’s kind of been an inverse relationship to what the industry normally has.”
A steady stream of developers considered purchasing South Boston’s long-shuttered John Randolph Hotel during the past decade, but none sealed the deal until Julian and Karie Brittano toured the downtown property last fall.
This spring, the couple’s High Point, North Carolina-based firm, The Brittano Group Inc., and its subsidiary, The Rook Hotels, entered into a private-public partnership with the town to redevelop the four-story building into a boutique hotel with 32-plus rooms and a rooftop bar under the name “The Rook at South Boston.” A city-owned building adjacent to the hotel will be revamped into a restaurant and conference center. Construction is slated to start this summer and take about two years.
Karie Brittano, a licensed general contractor, had been an adjunct professor at Danville Community College where she worked with Brian Jackson, the college’s vice president of workforce services. Jackson knew of the couple’s interest in economic revitalization and told them about the hotel.
“Its historical content drew me in,” says Karie Brittano, who envisions combining the Depression-era hotel’s past with its proximity to the South Boston Speedway and Virginia International Raceway. “We want to have a historical feel where old world meets new world, including a tie-in with the raceway and checkered flags.”
Built in 1929, the John Randolph Hotel is the largest building in downtown South Boston but has sat empty since closing more than 30 years ago. The Halifax Industrial Development Authority acquired the property in 2011 and gutted the interior in preparation for redevelopment.
Julian Brittano has traveled throughout Southern Virginia scouting locations for filming upcoming TV pilots. “Exciting things are happening in Southern Virginia with the speedway and the raceway,” he says. “South Boston is a great central location, and the hotel will be the anchor of a new downtown.”
IDA Executive Director Kristy Johnson says the boutique hotel will be a turning point for downtown South Boston, which has seen a flurry of recent small retail and restaurant investments. “A redeveloped hotel that’s a boutique hotel adds a very cool downtown vibe,” she says. “Any investment into the area benefits our community as a whole.”
Town Manager Tom Raab estimates the renovation will cost about $11 million. The town has obtained more than $650,000 in grants, and the IDA, which owns the hotel, has applied for state industrial revitalization funds.
A painstaking restoration of the Warm Springs Pools will wrap up in time for The Omni Homestead Resort in Bath County to reopen one of America’s oldest spas by 2022’s end.
Formerly called the Jefferson Pools, the spring-fed public baths have been closed since 2017. The resort had hoped to start work on the $3 million project in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic induced a hospitality industry shutdown that delayed construction to September 2021.
The historic property includes two wooden bathhouses — the octagonal Gentlemen’s Bath House, built in the 1820s, and the larger, circular Ladies’ Bath House, built in the 1870s. Both structures surround bubbling pools of warm water and are open to the sky.
Omni engaged Richmond-based architectural firm 3North and Roanoke-based general contractor Lionberger Construction to lead the project.
After sitting for months in a pandemic-shuttered world, the all-wood buildings were in worse condition than the team anticipated when work began, according to Ed Pillsbury, architect and principal at 3North. “We saw significant deterioration during that time as the roof started to fail,” Pillsbury says.
Pillsbury says the bathhouses’ 200-year history has been a constant cycle of repair, as steam and the elements have taken their toll.
“People have been fixing these up every 20 years for the last 200 years, and this is another cycle of that,” he says.
Much of the unexpected deterioration the team found was in areas where more recent repairs had been made, meaning that some of the structure’s timbers that date as far back as the 1820s were salvageable, Pillsbury says.
Over the years, repairs have introduced new architectural features, and in the current restoration, 3North and Lionberger will restore the baths to their appearance in 1925, which the Virginia Landmarks Register recognizes as the end of their most active era as a thermal water resort.
This means restoring the domed roof on the ladies’ bath, which will be a marked change from the way it has looked since the 1950s.
Lynn Swann, the Homestead’s director of marketing and communications, says the resort hasn’t yet finalized hours of operation, but the pools will be open later this year to both resort guests and the general public.
“We are all very excited to be able to reopen the pools,” she says. “If it weren’t for these natural springs, the Homestead wouldn’t be here.”
Virginia hotel revenues in April were down 3.5% compared with pre-pandemic April 2019 revenues, largely due to the lagging Northern Virginia market, according to data released Wednesday by STR Inc., a division of CoStar Group Inc. that provides market data on the U.S. hospitality industry.
Hotel rooms sold decreased by 4.7% last month, compared with the same period in 2019. The average daily rate (ADR) paid for hotel rooms through April was $108, a 1.3% increase from the April 2019 ADR. Revenue per available room (RevPAR), though, fell to $60, 4% lower than this time in 2019. In April 2021, Virginia’s ADR was $92.72 and RevPAR was $52.42.
Hotel revenues through the first four months of 2022 in the Hampton Roads market were 19% higher than those recorded in 2019. Within Hampton Roads, the Chesapeake/Suffolk submarket saw its revenue increase the most, up 23% compared to 2019. Virginia Beach hotels saw 22% higher revenue, and the Newport News/Hampton submarket saw 15% higher revenue than 2019.
In the Richmond market, total hotel revenue increased 9.4%, and Charlottesville saw a 19.6% jump. The Blacksburg market saw a 26.6% increase in hotel revenue compared with 2019.
Northern Virginia hotel revenue continues to lag behind 2019 levels. Hotel revenue for the region was 28% lower through April, compared with the same period in 2019. The only other market showing a decline in revenue was Roanoke, which was down by 0.8%. The Northern Virginia market is essentially responsible for the overall decline in state revenue numbers, according to a press release from Old Dominion University’s Center for Economic Analysis and Policy. In 2019, it accounted for 43% of the state revenues.
Still, the latest Northern Virginia revenue is encouraging, said Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association President Eric Terry . In March, Northern Virginia revenue was 31% lower than in 2019.
“We’re seeing some good signs of recovery up there,” he said. “A lot of the student youth groups are coming in, so it’s been the most positive report that I’ve think I’ve seen for April.”
In addition to school trips to Washington, D.C., some corporate business is returning, he added.
In Northern Virginia, rooms sold decreased by 21% compared with this time in 2019. In Roanoke, rooms sold decreased by 7%. The Newport News/Hampton market and the Bristol, Virginia, market both sold 4% fewer rooms. Virginia Beach market rooms sold were down 2%. The Chesapeake/Suffolk submarket, though, had a 9% increase in rooms sold.
Richmond-based Virginia Restaurant Lodging & Travel Association has promoted Brittany Wojdyla to vice president of membership and business development, the organization announced Thursday.
In her new role, Wojdyla will be responsible for leading the association’s membership efforts throughout the state, developing partnerships and sponsorships, managing events and overseeing marketing and communication strategies.
Wojdyla joined VRLTA in September 2019 to lead the association’s membership retention and acquisition. During her tenure, she helped transform the organization’s communications, improved member outreach and enhanced member engagement.
“Brittany has proven to be an indispensable team member and leader within the association,” Eric Terry, VRLTA president, said in a statement. “She has built valuable relationships with our members and other constituents and has made great strides in updating and streamlining internal efficiencies. I am confident that she will continue to build on these successes and play a key role in our future efforts and accomplishments.”
Wojdyla joined VRLTA from Sea Island Resort in Georgia and has more than 10 years of hospitality, hotel and event planning experience. She received her bachelor’s degree in hospitality and food management with a minor in marketing from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
“I look forward to continuing my work alongside our staff, members, partners and sponsors to build on our foundation and plan new initiatives that will benefit Virginia’s hospitality and tourism industry into the future,” Wojdyla said. “It is a pleasure to support the efforts of so many of the commonwealth’s finest businesses and organizations.”
Tournaments at the Virginia Beach Sports Center. Events at the Virginia Beach Convention Center. A busy Oceanfront boardwalk.
That was the scene in Virginia Beach during just one weekend in mid-March.
And it was the perfect “prelude” to the summer travel season, says John Zirkle, general manager of the DoubleTree by Hilton Virginia Beach. “The Oceanfront was hopping; the whole resort area was hopping,” he says. “This year it’s safe to say that we are very optimistic on the [summer tourism] season.”
Zirkle’s viewpoint resonates with hoteliers and tourism industry experts across Virginia. Tourism suffered a devastating blow two years ago when the COVID-19 pandemic began, bringing shutdowns and drastically reducing business and leisure travel. Since then, the industry has been slowly reviving, but there have been stops and starts along the way.
In some parts of the commonwealth, this could be the best year for leisure travel spending and activity since 2019. Many signs point to a springtime resurgence of travel activity, including Carnival Cruise Line’s decision to restart its cruises to the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Caribbean from Norfolk, starting in mid-May.
Still, some tourism experts believe that full recovery will not happen until 2023.
In Virginia, that’s largely because business travel has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, dragging down hotel occupancy and travel spending in the state, says Dan Roberts, director of research and market intelligence for the Virginia Tourism Corp.
Due to the lingering pandemic and its side effects, ranging from labor shortages to remote work and videoconferencing, many businesses still are not yet back to traveling or planning conventions and large meetings.
That’s had a big impact on Northern Virginia, which has half of the state’s total hotel supply and relies heavily on business travel, Roberts says: “That whole economy is built around serving that midweek business traveler.”
As a result, compared with 2019, Virginia’s hotel room revenues were down about 18% in 2021 and occupancy rates were down 11.5%, according to the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy at Old Dominion University. The center produces reports using data from STR Inc., a division of CoStar Group Inc. that provides global hospitality market data.
Even so, Christopher Nassetta, president and CEO of Tysons-based Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., has said that he believes business travel will return. Presenting Hilton’s fourth quarter earnings results in February, he reflected on an improving future for the industry.
“We were pleased to see continued recovery throughout 2021, with our fourth quarter showing strong results versus 2019,” he said in a statement. “Although new variants of the virus have had some short-term impact, we are optimistic about the acceleration of recovery across all segments during 2022. We remain confident in the future of our business.”
Whether business travel will surpass pre-pandemic levels is in question, says Vinod Agarwal, professor of economics at ODU and deputy director of the Dragas Center.
Even as people restart business travel, they may opt to travel less often for individual or smaller meetings because they’ve now become accustomed to digital conferencing and other virtual communications platforms.
“They may want to meet clients in person, and in between they could do Zoom meetings,” Agarwal says. “It’s saving travel time and convenience. Face-to-face is required and needed, but not very often.”
‘This too shall pass’
Tourist attractions like Busch Gardens Williamsburg will be fully open for business this summer after two previous seasons of pandemic shutdowns and restrictions. Busch Gardens photo courtesy Virginia Tourism Corp.
Aside from corporate travel, leisure tourism is rebounding across the state.
That’s evident in Williamsburg, where revenue per available room in February was the highest it’s been since 1987, says Ron Kirkland, executive director of the Williamsburg Hotel & Motel Association.
Strong revenue in January and February typically bodes well for a successful spring season for the Williamsburg area and that leads to a good summer, he says. Despite summer 2020 shutdowns and 2021 labor shortages and capacity limits, popular area attractions such as Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens will be fully open for business this summer.
And while business travel from conventions and other corporate functions has not yet returned at many Williamsburg lodging properties, Kirkland says, vacation travel spending has been providing a boost.
“Leisure tourism has been so strong, particularly over the last nine months, we’ve been able to offset any losses we would have from the group market,” he says.
Leading the rebound statewide is Hampton Roads, with the strongest market in the state for leisure travel.
In Virginia Beach, hotel occupancy in 2021 was down only 3.7% compared with 2019, according to the Dragas Center.
Despite the rise of the delta variant of COVID-19, last summer was a surprisingly good time for travel at Virginia Beach, says Zirkle, who also serves as president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association.
Virginia Beach-based hospitality company Gold Key | PHR plans to open its new Embassy Suites by Hilton hotel, featuring 157 luxury suites, in early 2023. Embassy Suites by Hilton rendering courtesy Gold Key | PHR
He expects even more travel demand this summer, especially as pandemic restrictions have lifted and restless consumers are ready to go places. “The people who were hesitant to travel last summer are traveling this summer,” he says.
Optimism in the Virginia Beach market is one reason that plans have continued for a new Embassy Suites by Hilton, an Oceanfront hotel under construction on Atlantic Avenue as an addition to Virginia Beach hospitality company Gold Key | PHR’s Cavalier Resort. Gold Key aims to open the new Embassy Suites, featuring 157 luxury suites, in early 2023.
“The ownership group believed that this too shall pass,” says Glenn Tuckman, Gold Key’s chief operating officer, alluding to the effects of the pandemic on the industry. “We have weathered a lot of economic challenges, and they just really believed in the product and the advantages of the [Embassy Suites] going up now rather than delaying it or canceling it.”
Staffing woes persist
While hoteliers expect a strong summer, they’re still encountering staffing challenges that have plagued lodging and hospitality businesses throughout the pandemic. For instance, Zirkle’s DoubleTree opens its restaurant only for breakfast and dinner, not lunch, because of low staffing levels.
Furthermore, like many other hotels now, the DoubleTree does not clean guest rooms every day unless a customer requests it. Staffing levels are not yet high enough for daily room cleanings, plus customer demand for the service has changed.
“We have found a surprising number of people prefer you not to go into their room,” Zirkle says. “They just get some fresh towels, and we empty trash. That’s a huge saver for us.”
The hospitality industry in Virginia lost 88,000 jobs at the start of the pandemic and 51,000 of those jobs remain unfilled, says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association. Due to lack of staff, he says, “we still have a lot of restaurants that used to be open seven days a week and are now open five days a week.”
This summer, however, hoteliers and restaurant owners across the nation expect to see some staffing relief thanks to an international work exchange program. The J-1 visa program, which brings international college students to the United States to work in hotels and restaurants for the summer, is back up and running after the Trump administration suspended several types of foreign worker visas in June 2020.
The Biden administration lifted the pandemic-related ban on foreign workers in March, but, by then, some visa applications were stalled and not approved in time for the summer season.
Typically, 30 to 40 college students work at the DoubleTree as housekeeping, restaurant and front desk staff on J-1 visas during the summers. Last year, only two J-1 students made the deadline and worked at the DoubleTree, Zirkle says.
Participants under the J-1 visa program dropped by 98% in Virginia and 95% across the United States in 2021, according to the Alliance for International Exchange. In Virginia, there were 116 summer work exchange students in 2020, compared with 4,621 in 2019.
“The J-1 students are a game changer,” Zirkle says. “Having them this year will be a huge benefit.”
Tourism challenges
One factor that could negatively impact tourism in the commonwealth is ongoing crime and violence in Hampton Roads, a problem that seemed to be worsening in the early months of 2022. An April shooting at Norfolk’s MacArthur Center shopping mall killed one person and injured two others. And in March, a Virginian-Pilot newspaper reporter was one of two people killed in a shooting outside a restaurant and bar in downtown Norfolk. Last year, in March 2021, a spate of shootings one night at Virginia Beach’s Oceanfront tourist area left eight people wounded and two dead, including one of superstar musician Pharrell Williams’ cousins, Donovon Lynch, who was killed by police.
Kurt Krause, president and CEO of VisitNorfolk, has been talking with city officials about how to create a safer environment in his city. He’s worried that increases in crime could deter tourists. “The savvy traveler will look at it,” Krause says. “We need to make sure that we are addressing all of those needs. We have to create the environment that people feel safe to walk the streets at night.”
Rising gas prices could pose another challenge for hospitality businesses this summer, potentially impacting consumers’ travel plans. Nationally, the price of a gallon of gasoline hit a record high of $4.33 on March 11, just after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to AAA. In Virginia, the average per-gallon price for regular gasoline was $3.94 on April 14.
Agarwal says the surge in gas prices likely will impact air travel more than vehicle travel this year, because airline ticket costs are increasing. Also, travel by vehicle is a small portion of a family’s travel budget, he says.
Still, consumers may make different travel choices. For example, due to higher fuel costs, vacationers from New England may drive a shorter distance and decide to stop in Virginia Beach rather than venturing farther south to Myrtle Beach or Florida, Agarwal says.
Landon Howard, president of Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge in Roanoke, says he expects these kinds of travel adjustments to benefit Southwest Virginia.
“People have the money to travel; they want to travel,” he says. “Many of our feeder markets are within a 3- to 4-hour drive from us. A lot of people will look at us as an alternative, rather than those longer travel trips.”
‘Reasons for optimism’
Restrictions on tour sizes have been lifted at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate in Charlottesville, which is starting to see school groups booking trips from as far away as the West Coast again. Photo courtesy Virginia Tourism Corp.
Tourist attractions and cultural organizations like the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that owns and operates Monticello, Jefferson’s historic home in Charlottesville, are closely watching gas price increases and already seeing strong visit trends.
Linnea Grim, the foundation’s vice president of guest experiences, estimates that visits to Monticello now are at about 70% to 75% of 2019 visitation numbers. “We have seen a really steady rebound over the course of last year and into this year,” she says. “People didn’t get out as much as they wanted with the omicron surge. We are expecting some local and regional travel” to Monticello.
Meanwhile, tours at Monticello are back to full capacity and school groups, some as far away as the West Coast and Texas, are beginning to book trips there again.
“We see a lot of reasons for optimism,” Grim says.
Similarly, the American Shakespeare Center, a Staunton performing arts theater that features a re-creation of Shakespeare’s indoor theater, is back with a full season of live shows. It suffered COVID-related interruptions in 2020, and its 2021 fall season was canceled due to internal staff conflicts and allegations of a toxic work environment that led to the resignation in February of Artistic Director Ethan McSweeny. He was replaced by Heathsville native Brandon Carter, ASC’s first Black artistic director.
Now fully reopened, the theater requires audience members to wear masks and present proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test. It also offers a certain number of performances with socially distanced seating.
“The audiences are coming back, compared to this time last year and this time two years ago,” says Jo Manley, spokeswoman for the center. “We are performing live on stage, which is a blessing, and no plans to curtail.”
Back on Virginia’s waterways, now that both Norwegian and Carnival cruise lines have restarted cruises from Norfolk, it could be smooth sailing for the city’s tourism market.
Nauticus, a maritime discovery center whose Norfolk campus houses Virginia’s only cruise terminal, says it expects to welcome about 150,000 passengers and 62,000 crew members in 2022 from all cruise lines, its highest yearly total ever, says Rehn West, Nauticus development director.
This year marks Norwegian’s first return to the port in two years, and it plans to make 25 stops in Norfolk this year.
“It’s surreal to go from a relatively empty pier throughout 2020 and 2021 to our busiest season ever in 2022,” says Stephen Kirkland, executive director of Nauticus, in a news release.
Music superstar and Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams announced Tuesday that his signature three-day music festival, Something in the Water, will be held in June in Washington, D.C., making its departure from Virginia Beach official.
Scheduled for June 17-19 on Independence Avenue, the three-day festival includes a long list of pop and hip-hop artists, including “Pharrell & phriends & some people we can’t announce.”
The festival was previously held on the Virginia Beach Oceanfront in April 2019, before the pandemic caused its cancellation in 2020 and 2021. In September 2021, however, Williams wrote a letter to the city manager saying that he would cancel the 2022 festival because of the city’s “toxic energy.” He said that the fallout from his cousin Donovon Lynch’s killing by a Virginia Beach police officer in March 2021 and a special grand jury’s finding of no probable cause to charge the officer, combined with other issues surrounding Williams’ economic development projects in the city, made him decide to call off the festival, which yielded $24 million in local economic impact in 2019.
However, in recent weeks, there were rumors of the festival moving to Washington, confirmed Tuesday via Williams’ social media platforms and the event’s website.
Barry Biggar, president and CEO of Visit Fairfax, said that his office is excited about SITW’s move, but the festival’s impact on surrounding Northern Virginia localities “depends on how full the hotels in D.C. are and how much they charge. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
In a January interview with Virginia Business, Williams said that he wanted to restage the festival elsewhere, noting, “Something in the Water — when you talk DMV, they always say, ‘Man, whether it’s Missy Elliott or Timbaland or Chad Hugo or Michael Vick, it must be something in the water.'”
Virginia hotel revenue from business travel this year is projected to be down 28.3% from pre-pandemic levels, or about $674 million less than the $2.39 billion the lodging industry took in during 2019, according to a report released Tuesday by the American Hotel & Lodging Association and Kalibri Labs.
Nationally, the associations forecasts a 23% drop in business travel lodging revenue, a decline of more than $20 billion compared with 2019.
Business travel, which includes corporate, group, government and other commercial categories, isn’t likely to fully recover until 2024, according to the report.
“As we get out of COVID-19 — hopefully we do — it is going to take time for business travel to come back to what it calls pre-pandemic levels. It may actually never come back to pre-pandemic levels,” said Vinod Agarwal, the deputy director of Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy.
In a statement, AHLA President and CEO Chip Rogers said, “While dwindling COVID-19 case counts and relaxed CDC guidelines are providing a sense of optimism for reigniting travel, this report underscores how tough it will be for many hotels and hotel employees to recover from years of lost revenue. The good news is that after two years of virtual work arrangements, Americans recognize the unmatched value of face-to-face meetings.”
Agarwal is skeptical, however, noting that businesses have adapted to online meetings and software platforms. “As COVID-19 effects start to lessen, some business travel will be back and has been back, actually,” Agarwal said. “People have started to travel, but I do not think they will travel as much as they used to, simply because they found efficiencies in being able to conduct business without being in a face-to-face environment.”
Urban markets tend to rely heavily on business from events and group meetings. For the metro Washington, D.C., area, the report projects business travel revenue will be down 54.5%, or almost $1.5 billion, compared with 2019 revenue of $2.75 billion. In March, hotel revenue in Northern Virginia was 31% lower than in March 2019, according to data from STR Inc., a division of Washington, D.C.-based CoStar Group Inc. that provides market data on the U.S. hospitality industry.
“Wherever you have concentrations of hotels, especially downtown hotels in most large markets, it will take some time for them to recover fully,” so the report isn’t surprising, Agarwal said.
The study anticipates the Virginia Beach market will be down 11.5%, or $54.66 million, from its 2019 revenue of $476.64 million. In March, revenues in Hampton Roads were 19% higher than March 2019 revenues, according to STR Inc. data. Revenue from leisure travel more than compensated for declines in business travel, Agarwal said.
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