Events and Travel Businesses Face Hard Road Back to ‘Normal’

By Paul Natinsky

For the most part, events-oriented businesses in Michigan are staying the course as the pandemic continues to unfold in unpredictable ways.

Many thought business would be back to normal by now, particularly with the spectacularly early arrival of viable vaccines. But, as the old proverb goes, “Man plans, God laughs.” 

While vaccines have become the norm and social distancing and masked faces seem like second nature, new strains of COVID and a reluctance among part of the population to vaccinate have complicated things.

So the return of events and travel are proving to be as uneven and unpredictable as everything else associated with this pandemic has been.

A Tough Gamble

In 2019, a few months before the COVID pandemic forced a ban on gatherings, entrepreneur Raymond Lousia bought into Lorio Ross Events and Entertainment, a company that books singers, disc jockeys and other entertainers for parties and corporate events, and Vegas Games to Go, a business that creates casino nights for private parties and charity events. He was doubling down on his success with TapSnap, a photo booth franchise he had been operating for eight years. 

He says the restrictions and regulations that came on the heels of skyrocketing COVID rates in Michigan shut him down cold. The three companies survived on PPP loans and sporadic bookings during periods of temporarily loosened restrictions.

Lousia is optimistic about the future, but says building back to pre-COVID levels will take time. He says bookings have begun to increase. Some customers are beginning to book popular, in-demand bands a year or more ahead of their event. In other cases, corporate clients have taken a “wait until next year” approach to the normally busy holiday season coming up this fall and winter.

Lousia says he expects a slow ramp-up to a full recovery that will take off sometime in mid-2022. During that stretch, Lousia hopes to spend some time working on the companies’ internal structures and incrementally increasing bookings. 

A Long, Strange Trip

The travel industry also has been hit very hard, having endured a complete shutdown and still facing border closures, stiff regulations and constantly shifting rules. 

“The president of the United States did not stand up in front of the country and say, ‘Don’t eat.’ He did say, ‘Don’t travel,’” said David Fishman of Cadillac Travel in Southfield.

Fishman says the travel industry endured an 18-month moratorium on travel—a situation made worse because travel is planned well ahead of a trip, leaving agencies short revenue they booked in 2019 for 2020 trips. 

Fishman says his company spent much of 2020 “undoing” the work they did booking travel in 2019. So his 100 percent dip in revenue was exacerbated by his duty to pay staff to unwind 2019 deals, resulting in losses of well over 100 percent. 

Making matters worse, says Fishman, is that the government relief remedies did not recognize the pounding the travel industry absorbed. Restaurants—devastated and reduced to one-quarter or less of revenues—received 3.5 times earnings, while the travel industry only got 2.5 earnings, despite greater restrictions.

Shifting rules were also unkind to the travel industry. Fishman says the original PPP loans to businesses required that recipients use the money within eight weeks. That was later changed to 12 weeks, which deprived travel agencies of letting their employees collect unemployment and then letting the PPP money kick in after unemployment was exhausted. In a total shutdown, the employees simply could not book travel, meaning they were in particular need of relief until they could work again.

Things are picking up, says Fishman, for those who remain in business. He says he read an article recently that predicted 81 percent of travel agencies will fail by the end of 2021. Cadillac won’t be one of them, and Fishman says he expects to be very busy as pent-up demand brings increased bookings. He expects to be very busy.

As in seemingly any crisis, there are those who take advantage of others during a difficult time. Fishman urges travelers to buy travel insurance—that generally costs 5 to 10 percent of the cost of a trip—to hedge against sudden shutdowns or short-notice regulation changes.

A Return to the Great Outdoors

The event planning business is also facing an uneven and unpredictable return to normalcy. Wedding planner Dalia Attisha is still battling the effects of COVID regulations from state government and altered expectations from clients. 

We spoke to her a few months ago and she had hoped to be closer to normal business operations by now. “I thought by May we’d be okay. It’s clearly looking like we won’t be okay until maybe September,” she says.

Attisha continues to urge couples toward outdoor weddings of 200 or fewer guests. This is a difficult and emotional challenge within the Chaldean community, where 500-guest weddings at ostentatious banquet halls are common. 

Attisha cautions her clients that regardless of the size of the guest list, COVID caution will trim the RSVPs down to about 200. 

In addition to managing client guest-list expectations and a backlog-worsened shortage of wedding venues, Attisha finds herself trying to help clients understand that re-creating a ballroom in one’s backyard can actually be more expensive than booking a traditional banquet hall.

The result is that Attisha puts more hours into her wedding packages than ever, but without an increase in fees. She says she would rather just deal with the unanticipated changes and last-minute client issues than let her customers down. 

Despite the challenges, weddings plans continue and Attisha soldiers on, keeping the focus on her customers and patiently waiting for a return to normalcy.

Borders and Boarders

Much like the event-planning industry, hospitality businesses are doing their best to plan a return to pre-COVID life while guessing at what might come next.

After the initial broad shutdown a year ago March, hotels faced an uneven restart that featured new and shifting regulations, corporate travel shutdowns and international border closings.

But it looks like the clouds might be clearing. Sly Sandiha, an executive with Farmington Hills-based Pinnacle Hospitality, says bookings at the company’s properties are increasing. 

Pinnacle owns, operates, and develops franchised hotels for several major hospitality chains such as Marriott, Hilton, and IHG. Pinnacle manages both corporate and leisure properties across Michigan. Sandiha says the occupancy at the company’s properties is increasing on a weekly basis. He says the goal and standard within the industry is the return to 2019 levels of revenue and occupancy.  

While that goal is forecast for second or third quarter 2022, Sandiha says the early indications from corporate travel departments is that travel budgets will begin to increase in September.  

Leisure travel is expected to outpace a return to corporate travel normalcy. Sandiha says companies still face uncertain border regulations and other barriers to international travel. He adds that companies are also still utilizing online business tools, attempting to get a return on the investment they made during the pandemic. But he has faith that they will continue a budding trend toward putting their employees and managers back in the field, doing business in person, building personal relationships and shaking hands the “old-fashioned way,” where ideas are born and deals closed.

All businesses will face challenges as they work to get back to normal despite facing unexpected challenges. But some businesses, by their very nature, have a harder road back.

Still, hope abounds that vaccination, good hygiene practices and perseverance will prevail in the end.