Coronavirus pandemic has huge impact on North Carolina’s tourism industry

RALEIGH, N.C. — Fear and government orders have kept many people from traveling, and the tourism industry has taken a huge hit because of it.

On Thursday, Channel 9 spoke with Wit Tuttel, the director of Visit NC who explained just how big an impact North Carolina has seen.

“NC as we see it is down about for travel spending about 77% from where we would normally be and so far this year we’ve lost about 6 billion in visitor spending which equates to about $200 million in state taxes and probably about a 100 million in local taxes in revenue that’s been lost,” Tuttel said.

But they’re hoping as people start to plan summer trips, they can feel safe while traveling in the Tarheel state. He said they have launched a statewide safety campaign.

“Our big push right now is a program called “Count On Me NC.” What we want people to do is to subscribe to this program and for travelers, it shows them the things to do to travel safely and healthy. There’s also an element for businesses to take in NC and they can take classes -- clean and sanitize their businesses so its really a pledge that we want the businesses to take and the travelers to take so that when travel as safe and healthy as possible and do it in a socially distant kind of way,” Tuttel said.

Tuttel said 11,000 people and 3,000 businesses, including hotels and Airbnbs have taken the Count On Me pledge so far. A list of those businesses can be found on their website.

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