The Threat to California Tourism

Tourism is big business in California. It's a $130 billion sector of the economy supporting one million jobs. It's a big reason the state's economy is in such great shape now. State unemployment is about 4%, Sonoma County's about 2.5%. Counties with the highest unemployment rates are where you don't see tourists.

Visitation to local California wineries is down and people are trying to figure out why. When the economy recovered a few years ago visitation grew rapidly. It's natural to think this would eventually flatten out. But is there another issue in play here? Yes

Group of Chinese tourists arriving in California

The country seems to be plagued by catastrophic weather-related issues in the past few years. Terrible hurricanes, fires, and mudslides. The California wildfires may be a key to the drop in tourism.

There was the Wine Country Fires of October 2017, the Carr and Camp Fires in far northern California in 2018, fires in Yosemite National Park, and Malibu. Even when the fires weren't nearby there was unhealthy air from those faraway fires.

When you hear about one of these problems in California you are thinking of the state as a whole without probably realizing California is about 800 miles long; roughly the same distance from Boston to Myrtle Beach SC.

I'm intimately familiar with the effects of the Wine County Fires of almost a year-and-a-half ago. The news, whether from professional journalists or social media, made it seem the whole place had burnt down. In fact, the damage to tourism infrastructure was minimal and things were up and running again pretty quickly.

A few times I heard remarks from out-of-state visitors showing surprise that there wasn't fire damage everywhere in Sonoma County (and probably saying the same about Napa). It appears people looking for wine vacations may be looking elsewhere. Certainly people looking for outdoor holidays, from beach vacations to hiking the Sierra, may be rethinking and looking elsewhere.