Jordan Scruggs, who helps run the Quechee Pine Valley KOA campground his family owns on Route 4, knows when it’s time to brace for the annual influx of tourists arriving for foliage season: The leaves on the poplar tree by Cabin 28 are always the first to turn a brown mustard color.
“I watch that tree every year,” Scruggs said last week, noting that the ground at the base of the tree was already sprinkled with fallen leaves. “That’s how I can tell we are about to get busy.”
For many small businesses that cater to tourists — bed and breakfasts, hotels, restaurants, retail shops — and depend upon the short window of the leaf-peeping season as one of their most profitable times of the year, the ongoing coronavirus is making the outlook for business as lackluster as monochromatic fall foliage.
Meanwhile, for some businesses, such as those that afford outdoor activities, the tone is brighter.
At the Quechee KOA, located near Exit 1 on Interstate 89, the four-week stretch from mid-September to mid-October is typically among the busiest times as campers from all over the country file in to grab one of the 92 spaces available.
This leaf-peeping season, because of the coronavirus pandemic, fewer tourists are showing up.
“Most of the weekends during foliage season we are completely sold out. This year that’s not the case,” Scruggs said.
“As far as reservations this year, they are certainly down, there’s no doubt it,” Scruggs said, declining to specify how much. “COVID is definitely affecting us.”
All factors weighed, however, Scruggs said, running an outdoor campground — that hosts RVs and campers and offers cabins to rent where occupants can be self-contained and socially distanced — is one of the better businesses to have in the tourism industry in a pandemic.
“Camping is probably the safest thing you can during this whole thing,” he said. “We’re fortunate to be in this line of business.”
Indeed, for some businesses tied to the outdoors, the pandemic actually made them busier over the summer, which they expect will continue into the fall.
Paul Franklin, owner of Riverview Farm in Plainfield, said the farm’s pick-your-own fields of blueberries and raspberries have been attracting more families than usual this summer as they look for safe activities to do together.
“What we and other PYO operations have seen so far is a real increase and interest from families. That’s because it’s outdoors, you can social distance and you are getting out of the house and doing something,” he said.
He hopes that momentum continues into fall with a healthy turnout for apple picking, as well and the farm’s annual corn maze — the theme this year is “monsters of New England” — which has been designed to reduce the risk of kids coming into contact with each other.
Farm sales have been up 50% this year, Franklin said, driven largely by local customers but with some attributable to agri-tourism as the pandemic has led people to seek the safety of outdoors.
At the same time, a trip to a PYO field or a pumpkin patch or simply getting in a car for a day’s outing to view the fall colors does not require an overnight stay. That affects businesses in the lodging industry.
“We have a few bookings but nothing so far like we’ve had,” said Cathy Gasparik, who operates the six-room Shaker Farm Bed & Breakfast on Route 4A in Enfield. Typically they’re booked solid for most September and October weekends, said Gasparik, who is going into her 17th year owning the B&B with her husband, Joe.
Gasparik said she’s trying to look at the bright side — she wouldn’t feel comfortable accommodating the normal level of business because of health safety concerns.
“Frankly, I’m being cautious. I could have 15 guests (in the dining room), but there is no way I will do that, to keep them at a distance,” she said.
Across Mascoma Lake, Nancy Smith, owner of Shaker Hill Bed & Breakfast, said she’s had 20 cancellations for the fall and her three rooms are usually booked 75% of the time during leaf-peeping season. But this season it is looking like about 30%, she said.
“We used to be quite busy between May and October and, this year, all my business in March, April and May went away, and most of it in June. We had a few people in July. And much of the business scheduled for the fall is gone. So we’ll just have to see what happens,” Smith said.
Business owners say that two reliable sources of money-spending tourists have evaporated during the pandemic: international travel — particularly from Europe — and tour buses — especially from Canada — which regularly make stops along Route 4 in Quechee.
“The gorge, VINS, Quechee Gorge Village, Simon Pearce, this is a real destination area,” said Kipp Miller, who has owned Quechee Gorge Gifts since 1980 and, at 75, said he still comes into work at the store seven days a week.
Miller said about 200 buses with 50 passengers each roll through each leaf-peeping season but the bus tours have been canceled this year. The fall season accounts for 60% of his annual sales, he said, during the eight months a year his store is open.
Although he said the parking lot has been full on the weekends this summer with Twin State travelers, “90% of them are here to swim at the gorge,” he said. “They weren’t shopping.”
Miller, whose father, Richard Miller, owned 25,000 Gifts in White River Junction (“I grew up in the business,” he said with a laugh), expects sales to be down by 30% this year.
“I will be pleased with that,” he said. “It will probably be more.”
A half-mile east, at the cluster of shops known as Quechee Gorge Village, Quechee General Store co-owner Angela Moore said she is “cautiously optimistic” about tourist traffic during foliage.
She and her partner Cindy Walker, who took over the store from prior owner Cabot Cheese just as COVID-19 hit in March, have been repositioning the business to focus on selling artisanal Vermont-made packaged foods, craft beers and regional wines to attract tourists and local residents.
“The tour buses were a lot, for sure,” said Moore, about what they meant for customer traffic in the store. But she said she has also been “pleasantly surprised” at the number of “day-trippers” from the region who have been passing through this summer, a trend Moore anticipates to continue through leaf-peeping season.
“Vermont is viewed as a safe and fun place to visit,” she said.
Indeed, many are pinning their hopes on short-haul tourism to help make up for the loss of long-distance tourists, along the Route 4 corridor between Woodstock and the junction of interstates 89 and 91.
Jill Rose, who with her husband, Don, left suburban New Jersey to buy the Applebutter Inn in Taftsville in 2016, said that international tourists account for 30% to 40% of their bookings in the fall.
“Starting from about Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, we are usually fully booked, six rooms, three nights,” she said. “We’ve had quite a few cancellations, international and otherwise. I’m hopeful we’ll fill that in with people from New England. People want to get away, get out of the area. They want to get out of the house and go somewhere new.”
But, Rose said, “I don’t know if that will happen.”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
