Three major Charleston events are coming back. Their return could be worth $105 million
John Powell never thought he’d be this thankful for hand sanitizing stations.
The dispensers — more than 20 of them — will be scattered throughout the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition later this month when the three-day outdoors festival returns to Charleston for the first time since the pandemic.
In the past, this popular event that unofficially kicks off Charleston’s tourism season didn’t need so many sanitizing stations (just a few near the restrooms for good measure, said Powell). But after the coronavirus forced the expo to cancel in 2021, organizers wanted this year’s event to feel safer than ever for the nearly 40,000 people they expect to attend.
If that means giving attendees more opportunities to get a dollop of disinfectant whenever they want, then so be it, said Powell.
“When I look at what we’re building out and what is safe and what is not, it’s not just looking at numbers and curves. I’m looking at real people,” said Powell, SEWE’s executive director. “I’m thinking about my 10-year-old nephew and my 74-year-old parents who attend every year.”
He said he is also thinking about the restaurant owners and hotel partners who have reached out to him in the last two years, the ones who stopped him on the street to tell him they were hurting without SEWE and the ones who begged him to bring back the event in 2022.
“It feels like we’re this little beacon of hope out there, and that if we can do it — and do it safely — that this will be one giant step in getting back to normal,” Powell said of SEWE’s return. “There’s a lot of pressure to get it right.”
Now, for the first time since the pandemic began, Charleston will see its regional event lineup restored to its familiar cadence with SEWE in February, Charleston Wine + Food in March and the Cooper River Bridge Run in April.
The stakes are high and anticipation is great after this tourist-dependent city went two years without seeing the usual boost in visitor spending that these events routinely inspire.
Their return could inject upwards of $105 million into Charleston’s economy, according to past economic impact totals shared by the events.
SEWE, for example, has said its three-day event routinely generates anywhere from $35 million to $50 million for the local economy.
Daniel Guttentag, the director of the College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism Analysis, said these blockbuster events also tend to attract affluent, high-spending visitors.
“And they’re loyal,” Guttentag said. “All of these events have such a strong contingent of loyal attendees who come back every single year, who plan their entire trips around these events.”
That is, until the pandemic forced many large-scale festivals to cancel.
But on Wednesday, event organizers here got some good news when South Carolina’s public health director said the state reached its omicron-fueled COVID-19 peak in mid-January.
While public health data shows one in three coronavirus tests are still coming back positive, Dr. Brannon Traxler said South Carolina has seen a steady decline in cases since the week of Jan. 15.
Expecting big crowds
Though Charleston and its hospitality industry appear eager to welcome back tens of thousands of visitors, organizers say it’s been a challenge to put on large-scale events responsibly with the pandemic still lingering in the background.
At SEWE, the expo’s return Feb. 17-20 will include some subtle safety features, like those hand sanitizing stations. Along with adding a bit of space between outdoor tents, Powell said exhibitors will also receive their own supply of masks and hand sanitizers.
But other than requiring guests to wear masks on the shuttle, which zips attendees to the expo’s five sites that are spread out across the downtown Charleston peninsula, SEWE will have no COVID mandates in place.
SEWE will not require attendees to show proof of either their COVID-19 vaccination status or show they’ve had a negative COVID test within 72 hours of going to the event — an either-or option that Charleston Wine + Food and the Cooper River Bridge Run are implementing for the safety of their guests.
Instead, Powell confirmed SEWE is opting for an honor system. He said he trusts people to make responsible decisions based on their comfort level.
“We expect personal responsibility from our crowds, and we always have, even before this,” Powell said. “Just like you don’t take your beer out of the park, people know there are certain understood basic rules of respect now at larger events.”
And he’s predicting those crowds are going to be large ones when SEWE returns after a two-year hiatus.
The COVID effect
Charleston Wine + Food, which follows SEWE with its event from March 2-6, is expecting a similar swell.
In 2020, despite a rainy opening day and taking place right on the cusp of the coronavirus’s deadly march through South Carolina, the festival still attracted nearly 13,000 out-of-town attendees to Charleston and saw more than 28,000 people attend.
This year, festival spokeswoman Alyssa Maute Smith said they are expecting anywhere from 28,000 to 30,000 people over the five-day event. But Smith confirmed there will be some COVID precautions in place.
Charleston Wine + Food has partnered with the Medical University of South Carolina to craft what they are calling “a COVID responsible festival.”
Smith said all guests, staff, talent and vendors must provide proof that they’re either fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or show proof that they’ve had a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours of the festival event.
Also as part of this partnership, Smith said the festival will be rolling out a digital tool next week to help with this verification process.
The tool will be found in the Charleston Wine + Food app and will allow ticket-holders to upload proof of their COVID vaccination status or negative COVID test. That information, Smith said, will then be verified by trained medical staff at MUSC.
Festival-goers will then receive a QR code verifying their status that will be scanned when they arrive.
“We’re not just producing an event that is fun and really showcases and elevates the culinary brand of the city, but we want to do so in a responsible way,” Smith said. “I feel like a lot of people use the words ‘pre-pandemic’ or ‘post-pandemic’ or ‘new normal,’ and I think something that a lot of us in events and a lot of folks around the country have come to realize is that this isn’t something that’s going away anytime soon. So it’s on us to figure out how to do this in a responsible and seamless way.”
Irv Batten, the race organizer for the Cooper River Bridge Run, said he feels like part of that is also accepting that some people may not be ready to come back to big events just yet.
The Cooper River Bridge Run, a race that takes participants over the iconic Arthur Ravenel Bridge above the Cooper River and into downtown Charleston, is the third-largest 10K race in the country.
Usually held in April, organizers last year decided to instead host a scaled-down, autumnal version of the race in September after postponing due to the pandemic. It capped total participants in that race at 25,000 — a major cut for an event that usually draws 40,000 people.
While there is no self-imposed size limit this time on the regularly scheduled race on April 2, Batten said he doesn’t think it will see more than 30,000 participants. It will be the event’s 45th year.
“We’re just not going to reach the numbers that we had in 2019 and 2018. I think it’s just going to take a few years to build back up,” Batten said. “This April is a lot easier than September. It feels good again. We just love doing it, and it’s so important to the community and we’re so glad that we can do it. Hopefully it won’t be too long that we can get back to our normal numbers, but it all depends on the conditions with this COVID stuff.”
‘Back to being Charleston’
Meanwhile, in a sign of how great the anticipation is for SEWE’s return, the Charleston event came up during a recent S.C. Department of Natural Resources board meeting.
“I’ve been going to it many, many years,” board chairman Norman Pulliam said at the meeting in late January, as talk of deer season gave way to talk about SEWE. “A great deal of preparation goes into it, and let’s hope that COVID doesn’t shut it down.”
“Well, if the mayor is the only one that can shut it down, and if he’s stupid enough to do it, it’s going to cost him his job,” Mark Hartley, a board member from nearby Mount Pleasant, fired back. “All the hotels are booked, all the restaurants are booked.”
Traditionally, SEWE has been the event that ignites Charleston’s tourism season as winter gives way to spring.
“Looking at the numbers, you see that very clearly,” Guttentag said as he pulled up hotel occupancy rates and prices from past seasons, and noting the impact is acutely felt on the weekends. “You see they all just sort of jump up when SEWE kicks off, and that level holds for several months. It’s very clear to see. Everything jumps with SEWE, and then comes Wine and Food and the bridge run right after that.”
This month, when it returns, SEWE will be celebrating its 40th year.
Closing out the numbers on his screen, Guttentag said there is also another value that these events bring to the community.
“You can’t really overstate just how much it means symbolically,” he said. “It’s not just about tourism and visitors, because in the summer we saw that leisure travel was coming back here. But with the return of these events in this way, it’s going to feel like a return to normal.”
Powell puts it another way.
“We’ve got to do it, and we’ve got to do it right,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to being Charleston.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 11:00 AM.
