With open arms and some trepidation, Charleston prepares for its biggest weekend yet
Ahead of this Memorial Day weekend, which promises to be one of Charleston’s busiest in more than a year, a man raring for summer travel fired off a frustrated message to the Facebook page of downtown’s Circa 1886 Restaurant.
“Are you not booking any reservations online anymore?” they wrote. “I can’t find a reservation for four weeks!”
Michelle Woodhull said she sighed when she read it.
“That’s the reality,” Woodhull said in an interview. “I don’t have any.”
As president of Charming Inns of Charleston and Circa 1886, the last couple months have been a challenge unlike anything Woodhull has faced in her 22 years in the industry. When the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, it shut down Charleston during what should have been the height of its tourist season. Her hotel group had to rely on federal aid to make it through the year.
Now, another critical test looms.
When it opens Friday afternoon, Spoleto Festival USA — a 17-day arts festival that takes over the city’s theaters, churches and outdoor spaces — will be the first large-scale, in-person, citywide event in Charleston since the coronavirus pandemic began. The sister festival, Piccolo Spoleto, will also be in full swing. Charleston’s minor league baseball team, the RiverDogs, is also in town for a home-stand.
And in the backdrop of it all is Memorial Day weekend itself: A flagship summer holiday that experts predict will see tens of millions of people in the United States traveling again. According to a survey from American Express, 61% of travelers also said they plan to spend more than they normally would on a vacation this year, since they could not travel in 2020.
Charleston, a city synonymous with Southern hospitality, is anxious to capitalize on its status as a destination city and welcome visitors (and their cash) who may not have traveled anywhere in the last year and half. But when tourists arrive, they will also find a hospitality industry striving to meet this pent-up demand with fewer workers than they’ve ever had.
This could mean longer wait times at restaurants, slower service and more difficulty booking reservations.
“I’ve never in my career had to say, ‘No, I can’t take your business,’ and that’s really hard. This is certainly not something any of us want to do,” said Woodhull, who is also the president of the Lowcountry Hospitality Association. “We had a horrific 2020, so to see the demand and not be able to take it is so disheartening.”
However, Woodhull and others are also hoping this will be the weekend where things start to turn around.
A new tourist season
Charleston’s tourist season has long been tied to a robust event calendar.
Usually, the unofficial start comes in February with the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition, or SEWE. Then comes another festival, Charleston Wine + Food, in March. The Cooper River Bridge Run soon follows in April.
“We have these large events that really kick things off, but none of those happened this year,” said Daniel Guttentag, the director of the College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism Analysis.
With COVID cases surging in the state at the time, SEWE said it would be “irresponsible” to move forward with its event. Charleston Wine + Food said it decided to cancel “given the growing concerns around COVID-19 and the state of the industry that we exist to uplift.” Organizers for the Cooper River Bridge Run postponed the 10K race, which shuts down the Ravenel Bridge as runners race from Mount Pleasant and into downtown Charleston, to September.
Instead, this year, the driver of the tourist season in Charleston and elsewhere has been the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“And it’s happened very fast, both the rollout of the vaccines and what that has meant for tourism in getting so many more people back out and on the road and doing things, and not just on the road, but in the airplanes,” Guttentag said.
Tim Goodwin, the mayor of Folly Beach, can attest to that.
His oceanfront town, which is the closest beach to downtown Charleston, has seen summer-like numbers of visitors ever since an unseasonably warm day in February.
“It’s just been higher and higher each weekend ever since,” he said. “I know this weekend will just be over the top with people, I’m sure of it. Even the boat landings around us have been filling up early. Everybody is trying to get out and everybody wants to get out and do the same thing.”
There have been stress tests, though, in the lead-up to Memorial Day, like spring break, Mother’s Day and, most recently, the PGA Championship that took place at the Ocean Course on nearby Kiawah Island.
But Memorial Day, which is typically a blip in Charleston’s tourist season, is now proving to be a much more important holiday weekend than ever before.
“It’s these two weekends that are really jump-starting everything and are the shot in the arm that we’ll look back in a few months and say, ‘This is when the tourism season truly began,’” Guttentag said, referring to the weekends with the PGA Champsionship and the upcoming Memorial Day holiday.
‘This isn’t personal’
For John Keener, it’s a challenge his restaurants are anxious to tackle, but he admits the hospitality industry is still facing a labor crisis that makes meeting these demands harder than ever before.
Keener has been a part of Charleston’s restaurant industry for at least 30 years. He owns five restaurants and is best known for the Charleston Crab House, which has been dishing up seafood on Wappoo Creek in James Island since 1990.
But there were times, Keener said, where he had to shut down some of his restaurants for a few days just to give his staff a break. In the last 10-12 weeks, though, it’s been nothing but busy days.
The problem was he couldn’t find people to meet the soaring demand of hungry customers, and also, he needed to protect the employees he has.
“That’s been the toughest part for us: Having that balance of what’s good for the staff, what’s good for the customers, and what’s good for the business. It’s a very tough thing,” Keener said.
Dan Blumenstock understands. As the director of Lowcountry Hotels, which owns seven hotels across the Charleston region, Blumenstock said he is 85 employees short.
“I don’t mind using the word ‘crisis.’ We have been in a crisis when it comes to labor shortage,” he said.
But Blumenstock is noticing something else, which gives him hope: While he may not have the manpower to do housekeeping services for each room during the day, the people who are checking in are staying longer.
“We’ve been focused on trying to put policies and procedures in place to be accommodating, but at the same time we can only do so much at one time. My biggest thing that I’ve tried to do is be very up-front with our guests so they are aware of what service levels we are able to provide,” he said.
Woodhull, who oversees four small boutique hotels in downtown Charleston, said she’s seen an increased level of expectation from customers even though she’s trying to fill 25 open positions.
“If you haven’t been on a trip in a year and a half and you’re celebrating this anniversary I missed, and the birthday I missed and all of these things, I think there is this higher expectation in wanting this wonderful, perfect vacation,” Woodhull said.
“This isn’t personal,” she stressed.
Keener said he’s had to contend with frustrated customers at his restaurant, too. But both are optimistic, though, that the hospitality industry is about to round a corner. In the last two days, for example, Keener has hired 15 people for one of his restaurants.
“We haven’t hired 15 people in the last three weeks,” he said, to put that staffing surge in context.
Back at Circa 1886 restaurant, severs and hosts prepared for dinner service on Thursday afternoon.
They moved swiftly between tables at the restaurant’s outdoor dining area, where each table is draped in a white tablecloth and adorned with a small glass vase at the center. Most held a single, soft pink rose.
Brian Mohler, a server at the restaurant, wore two face masks as he placed glasses on the tables.
“We’re just getting started,” he said of the upcoming weekend. “And if we can just put 2020 in the rear-view mirror, that’d be great.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 2:25 PM.
