How These Places Spent the Year Travel Stalled

With the one-year anniversary of the pandemic declaration "The New York Times"

visited places around the world that rely heavily on the travel industry

to see how they have adapted in the intervening year

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared that an outbreak of the Neocoronavirus had reached pandemic proportions, and the extent of the spread and severity was alarming. With it, international travel immediately came to a halt, countries closed their borders, airlines canceled flights, cities around the world went into lockdown, and the toll in lives, health, and livelihoods continued to mount.

The tourism industry and all the people who depend on it have been dealt a staggering blow. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the global tourism economy is projected to shrink by about 80% in 2020, when all figures are taken into account.

Hoi An, Vietnam: Back to the Sea

In the middle of Vietnam, past the clucking chickens, Le Van Hung stepped out of his old house under the coconut palms with a mixture of uncertainty and hope, followed a short trail, and found the waves, the sky, and the sun by feel.

After months of stormy weather, the sea is now calm enough for him to safely row his basket boat to fish and crab in the South China Sea to support his family.

The 51-year-old was a deep-sea fisherman on big fishing boats for years. But in 2019, he gave up that career to help his daughter run a beachfront restaurant. The restaurant, which opened in Hoi An in 2017, is located in a historic harbor just in time for the city's tourism boom, thanks to a surge in Western adventurers and Asian sightseeing tours .

When a virus struck in early 2020, the tourists disappeared and the family lost much of their income, and in November a particularly brutal monsoon swallowed their dune-built restaurant into the sea.

Now, like so many in Hoi An who have given up fishing to work in the tourism industry as waiters, security guards or speedboat drivers, or to start their own companies catering to travelers, he has returned to what he knows best, making a living off the wind and waves.

Le Van Hung, a short, slightly hunched man with a bad back, supports six relatives, all crammed together under a mud hut with wooden shutters and little room. They barely get by.

In the stormy, rough seas since September, Le Van Hung has been afraid to get into the water for fear that his hot-bucket-sized boat will capsize. in late February, he looked out over the waves and saw that the restaurant's half-built brick outhouse was still buried under the messy beach. He told himself: the day after tomorrow will be safe.

So at sunrise on a recent Tuesday, Hung rocked his boat in 3-foot waves. In the aquamarine water, about 400 yards from shore, he began to unfurl his transparent fishing net. He began rowing with the net in tow, which formed a 6-foot-deep strainer that eventually stretched more than 500 yards and began catching fish.

The sea was meditatively calm, but Hung was worried by the empty net after yard after yard.

Mr. Hung grew up in Hoi An, which for centuries has been a fishing community sandwiched between the turquoise sea and emerald rice paddies. The atmospheric old town is lined with long wooden Chinese stores and mustard-colored French colonies.

Over the past 15 years, Vietnamese developers and international hotels have invested billions of dollars in seaside resorts, and locals and outsiders alike have opened hundreds of small hotels, restaurants and stores in and around the city's historic core. International tourists flocked to the city, filling the beaches by day and the Old Quarter by night. The epidemic has hit Hoi An particularly hard because of its over-reliance on foreigners. in 2019, of the 5.35 million tourists it received, 4 million came from abroad.

Around the Old Quarter, hotels have sprung up on Tan Thanh beach near Mr. Hung's home, and in 2017, Mr. Hung's family borrowed dozens of sunbeds and thatched umbrellas from relatives and set up an alfresco restaurant on the dunes behind their house.

Daughter Hong Van, 23, cooks seafood such as shrimp and squid spring rolls, while his two sons help cook and wait on guests, and he does the dishes.In the summer of 2019, Hung quit the deep-sea fishing fleet altogether, convinced that tourism was their ticket to a better life.

Mr. Hung, a widower, said through an interpreter, "I'm happier. It's very relaxing to work from home, and it's very comfortable to work with my family on a daily basis," he said through an interpreter.

He earns five times as much each month as he did when he was at sea, earning three million rupiah, or about $850, a month from fishing.

But the virus swept through Southeast Asia, and for much of April, Vietnam imposed a nationwide blockade and the restaurant was deserted.

Then, just as locals were hopeful that the nascent tourism industry would recover, Vietnam suffered a second outbreak in July. Hoi An was paralyzed for several more weeks. With his savings nearly depleted, Mr. Hung knew he had to get back to sea. By August, he had mastered the art of propelling a basket boat through the waves with a single oar, and his daughter sold his extra fishing gear on Facebook. But with the 2020 rainy season extending into 2021, the sea is becoming too dangerous.

As the boat swung out into the calm sea, Mr. Hung, dressed in a plastic smock and gloves, began to pull in the net, rolling it into a pile. Occasionally, he picks out a tiny jellyfish as clear as a round ice cube, and 20 minutes later, there is a 5-inch silverfish and a small crab in the skirt of the net, and 15 minutes after that, a small fish.

Because the sea is stingy, Mr. Hung rowed back. He tells himself that grilling the fish will save him a few pennies, and frying it will waste oil. He dreams of a rich catch.

Hung says, "I hope so, but I never know what's going on underwater."

Skagwe, Alaska: A Cruise Town Without Cruise Ships

It's that time of year when the residents of Skagwe generally start taking summer seriously. This is no joke, as May through September is tourist season, and they want to make all their money for the year in five intense months. On a busy summer day, 13,000 passengers disembark from cruise ships to experience this Gold Rush-era town in Southeast Alaska, surrounded by glaciers, mountains, deep fjords and the wilderness of the Tongass National Forest.

Despite the town's year-round population of just over 1,000, before the epidemic, Skagway was the 18th most popular cruise port in the world, generating $160 million in tourism revenue annually. 1.3 million tourists were originally expected to stroll Skagway's main street, Broadway, in the summer of 2020, and the historic saloons and hotels lining the street were transformed into souvenir stores. It's such a tourist-centered town that even the mayor, Andrew Cremata, has a sideline in tourism at the marina.

The epidemic has turned Scargay, a cruise-supported boomtown, into a ghost town, with no cruise ships visiting in 2020 and things looking grim for 2021. To make matters worse, the epidemic has not only destroyed its economy, it has also cut off Skaguay from the rest of the world by land. The only road out of town is the Canadian border, 20 miles from the town, but that is now closed.

To avoid a mass exodus of residents, the town came up with a unique approach. Instead of reserving stimulus money from the new Crown Assistance, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) for municipal operations, as has been done elsewhere in the United States, Scargay leaders redistributed most of the money to residents. Every full-time resident, regardless of age, will receive a $1,000 monthly stipend from June through December 2020, with one condition: they must use the money within the town. The money can be used to pay a mortgage, shop at the town's two grocery stores, buy home improvement supplies at the hardware store, or patronize a DVD rental store, though proof of a receipt that the purchase was made locally will be required.

For local leaders like Mayor Andrew Cremata and Jaime Bricker, chair of the Scargay Heritage Commission, the rationale is simple: make sure the town survives until the tourists come back. They've initiated vaccine distribution, new coronavirus testing, paid for residents' Medicaid insurance, helped the town's food bank and schools, among other programs. The mayor said, "A year ago, we had a goal to make it through the 21st year of the tourist season. We've done very well with that goal, and we want to make it to the 21st year of the tourist season." He paused and continued, "So now we have to set a new goal."

Andrew Cremata was referring to the fact that on February 4, the Canadian government extended until February 28, 2022, the ban on cruise ships in its territorial waters. That decision has already put Scargouie's 2021 summer tourist season in jeopardy.

Town leaders have tried everything. For example, they launched a 'Save Our Skagway' campaign to encourage previous season workers to come back and visit, with Andrew Cremata saying, "You can come here and have the best vacation of your life, doing all the things you didn't do in the previous summer in a town with no traffic jams, without having to work 70 hours a week.

But no one expects this scenario, or any other, to make up for the cruise ships that flocked here in previous summers, says Jaime Bricker: "Businesses here are used to the volume of the cruise industry."

Ashley Call, owner of Ocean Raft Alaska, has three ships that have been closed for nearly two years. Before that, he expected 2020 to be the busiest season ever.

To survive 2021, the town's mayor is hoping that all new stimulus packages targeted will include funding for such hard-hit cities. More than just surviving another year, the mayor said the current situation has caused residents to question the future of tourism and Skaguay.

The mayor said: "What would help Skagway? Not only from an economic point of view, but from a personal point of view, when you don't have to take care of your children anymore, work 70 hours a week, or have a more sustainable economy, is it healthier? People used to say, I won't even walk down Broadway Street. I wouldn't even go to the post office when the cruise ships came."

He laughed: "There's always been a dichotomy in Skaguay. As much as people will complain about going to Broadway Street, people here love tourists. So do I."

Paris: You can't talk about life when you have your meals delivered to the kitchen

Today, the restaurant's blood-red fa?ade looks the same, but inside it's quiet. Simple iron-framed oak tables stand bare without tablecloths, dinner plates and balloon wine glasses. Some of the bistro chairs have been put into storage, and the zinc bar is polished to a gleaming shine, with oversized beveled mirrors, cream-colored wall toppers, and green-and-rose-colored floral tiles, waiting for the moment when the Parisian restaurant opens.

Alain Ducasse, the owner of Aux Lyonnais, on the other hand, looks a little lost. Over the years, Michelin has crowned him, and the rich and famous from France and around the world have flocked to his restaurants. 40 to 60 percent of the customers at the restaurants Alain Ducasse owns in Paris are tourists, including his three-star restaurant at the Plaza Athénée, his two-star restaurant at the Hotel Le Meurice, and Aux Lyonnais, Ducasse sur Seine, Rech, Benoit, Allard, Spoon, and Cucina.

The epidemic turned his world upside down, as well as the entire French gastronomic scene. Restaurants and cafes across the country closed their doors, wondering when they would reopen.

Like many chefs here, Alain Ducasse, 64, turned to takeout, but not just any takeout. He's temporarily rebranded Aux Lyonnais as 'Naturaliste', and has turned the kitchen, which once served classics such as pike tacos with a rich Nantua sauce and calf's liver with parsnips and potatoes, into a hub for what he describes as 'healthier' dishes - free of meat, salt, sugar or dairy, and mainly fish, soy, fruit and vegetables. , soy, fruits and vegetables.

Appetizers cost 6 to 9 euros, main courses 12 to 14 euros and desserts 7 euros. Along one wall of the restaurant, there are dozens of boxes of meals waiting to be delivered (about 100 to 150 a day).

"I like to go crazy," says Alain Ducasse.

Naturaliste's Marvic Medina Matos is a 25-year-old chef from Peru. She and her staff crafted a menu that includes ceviche with pumpkin, red onion and hummus; smoked eel, cabbage and pine nuts; baked apples with ginger, chestnut emulsion and caramelized coffee; and a soy chocolate mousse. Theirs wanted to create a whole new menu that could be prepared in advance.

The day begins at 9 a.m., when Marvic Medina Matos and most of her six-person team arrive at the restaurant. "Naturaliste has 11 independent wholesale suppliers of fish, grains, seasonal fruits, vegetables and eggs, who deliver daily or every other day in advance.

The team dons white chef's jackets and aprons and begins to divide up the work. One trainee chef is in charge of the appetizers and making the ceviche. Another young chef is in charge of the main course, making soup with onions and carrots, chopping mustard greens and adding lentils. An apprentice was in charge of dessert, making puff pastry with flour and jam with lemon and kiwi fruit.

The process went quickly. When the order is printed, Marvic Medina Matos announces it aloud, and the team replies "Yes!" The team replies, "Yes! Three to four minutes later, the dish is ready.

Everyone on the team is responsible for packing the meals into boxes made of cane syrup, with the cutlery in an envelope with the word "Naturaliste" printed on the front, made of bamboo. An operations manager packs the boxes and handles the delivery through a number of services such as resto.paris, which is supported by the city of Paris.

For now, takeout keeps at least a few of Alain Ducasse's employees working and perhaps making some money. Dining in Paris is about the food, of course, but it's also just as much about 'le partage', the ****ing experience of being in a restaurant space together.

Alain Ducasse said, "In France, the ritual begins when you have six people around a table enjoying a meal. You open a bottle of champagne. Then you discuss what you're going to eat. Then you order, and when the food comes, you talk about what you're eating. After that, you discuss what you ate. Finally, discuss what you're going to eat next week. People want to socialize over a good bottle of wine and look at beautiful, well-dressed women, not just sit at the kitchen table and look at their spouses."

"You can't talk about life by having meals delivered to the kitchen."

Apollo Bay, Australia: a barely surviving zombie business

Since March 2020, most of Apollo Bay's Chinese restaurants have closed. Before the closure of the Australian border, it catered mainly to Chinese tourists

Apollo Bay, located in Victoria in southeastern Australia, is a 150-mile-long beach town along the Great Ocean Road and a popular destination for coastal day trips during the tourist season.

Apollo Surfcoast Chinese Restaurant, a beach-facing eatery with front and back access, can accommodate nearly 200 customers at a time who want a quick taste of home. But now, at lunchtime, the restaurant is dark. The large wooden tables and benches that were installed on the sidewalk just before the epidemic are deserted.

Michelle Chen opened the restaurant in 2012 after traveling along the Great Ocean Road and realizing there was no place for her Chinese stomach. With the rapid growth of Chinese tourists in this area, she saw an opportunity she couldn't miss, and it paid off, but it all came to a halt last year.

In 2017, China overtook New Zealand to become Australia's largest overseas tourism market, and in 2019, in Victoria, with Melbourne as its capital, Chinese tourists spent A$3.4 billion (roughly RMB 17 billion, more than the next 10 international markets combined), accounting for nearly 40 percent of all international overnight visitor spending. In the same year, 45% of Chinese overnight visitors to Victoria visited the Great Ocean Road region.

With China's growing middle class and proximity to Australia, this decade-long tourism boom has prompted tourism businesses in Victoria and smaller communities such as Apollo Bay to find ways to adapt, such as creating customized experiences, hiring Chinese-speaking staff, and translating menus and national park signage.

But last February 1, Australia banned flights from China, and in March it banned foreign travel, as if someone had turned off the tap.

Ms. Chen said: "All my business is almost gone. Except for a little time around Christmas, the restaurant has been closed since March last year.

On one side of the Great Ocean Road is rugged bushland, on the other is a surfing mecca, and further along is the Twelve Apostles, a popular natural attraction rising out of the water and made of limestone. Sue Ladewig, head of Victoria Park's commercial team, says: "It's packed with tourists at the height of the spring season, but this year I have it all to myself."

Strict border closures, embargoes and mandatory quarantines have allowed Australia to contain the virus relatively well, with one **** 909 deaths out of a population of 25 million. But Australia may remain closed until 2021, and businesses that rely on foreigners may not be able to hold out.

Evergreen Tours offers tours in Mandarin, and customers from China make up about half of their clientele. During peak season, they send 16 to 20 buses a week to the Great Ocean Road. General manager Tom Huynh says, "You're lucky if you get a tour with fewer than 10 people on it these days.

Mr Huynh said the Melbourne-based tour operator, which was founded in 1994, had de-insured and de-registered more than 20 of its buses, which had been sitting in storage.

In late February, Mr Huynh said the company had gone into liquidation and staff, including him, had been sacked.

At Apollo Bay Bakery, owner Sally Cannon said she removed the Chinese sign in the window after the travel ban took effect. For years, it had advertised the store's signature scallop pie.

Sally Cannon said, "We figured, let's just leave it like that, and it probably won't change for a long time."

After an emergency closure in February, most tourists from Victoria started visiting Apollo Bay again, and Sally Cannon's business picked up.

Max Zaytsev, who runs a tour company with Bilby Travel *** and has a clientele of mainly South-East Asians and Americans, has had little time to adapt to the changes. Before the epidemic, Max Zaytsev had taken out loans to buy four luxury minibuses and was still behind on expensive monthly payments.

In desperation, Max Zaytsev tried his hand at courier work. He removed the seats from one minibus and loaded it with courier packages, but the income was still not enough. He tried to diversify again, applying for accreditation in April to use his car to provide transportation for people with disabilities, paying about A$5,000 in fees.

He says: "Do you know how many jobs I've gotten? None, zero. I'm just trying to do everything I can."

Like many Australians whose businesses or jobs have been affected by the outbreak, Max Zaytsev, who lives in Melbourne, receives a fortnightly payment of $1,000 from the government in the form of a support grant called JobKeeper, but this is due to expire at the end of March.

For travel businesses like theirs, Max Zaytsev says: "We look like we're alive because we have JobKeeper, but we're like zombies.

U.S. Virgin Islands: Horses Can't Go Hungry

When the outbreak hit, Jennifer Olah had just signed the deed to a two-acre farm, the new home of her nonprofit equestrian organization on the western side of Santa Cruz Island.

In 2013, Cruzan Cowgirls began rescuing and rehabilitating horses on the island, as well as educating local youth about the animals, and Ms. Jennifer Olah relies on volunteers to help care for the horses, as well as on the revenue generated by international visitors. Visitors can ride the horses along Rainbow Beach and through the island's rainforest, a tour that lasts about an hour and a half and costs about $100 per ride, not including tips. Each week, Jennifer Olah receives about 25 visitors.

On March 23, 2020, when the home quarantine began, all non-essential businesses on Santa Cruz Island were forced to close, and cruise ships couldn't come through at all. During what should have been the busiest season of the year, Jennifer Olah's clientele disappeared. About her 25 horses, she says, "We were forced to close in March, but our horses had to be taken care of and we had to find a way to provide for our family."

One of the three main islands that make up the U.S. Virgin Islands, Santa Cruz is an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea and a U.S. territory that relies heavily on tourism and hospitality to drive its economy. Typically, tourism accounts for 60% of its GNP. But in 2020, the U.S. Virgin Islands saw a more than 60 percent drop in visitors from 2019, from more than 2 million to just over 800,000 (excluding December).

On Santa Cruz, that means unemployment on the island has doubled, petty theft has increased, and many businesses have closed, some for as long as 10 months. For Cruzan Cowgirls, food shortages, theft, and everything else follows.

"It's really expensive to buy feed here because all the feed has to come from off-island," says Jennifer Olah. The same goes for veterinarians. Since there are no equine doctors on the island, when a horse gets sick or needs care, a vet has to be flown in from the mainland. With proper medical care and food, it costs $500 a month per horse.

Because she doesn't have a full-time employee to pay every month, she doesn't qualify for a loan through the Wage Protection Program. To survive the shutdown, she took to Facebook and other social media to express her plight and held several fundraisers online.

Jennifer Olah said, "We texted everyone we've ridden with over the last eight years and asked them to donate or buy a gift certificate that could be used once the lockout was lifted." Their efforts raised enough money to make it through the tough month of March.

Frequent thieves also worried her, she said: "A few months ago, all our horse feed was stolen. Another time, our generator was stolen, all our tack was stolen twice, and several saddles and saddle pads. Someone even stole a couple of chickens and ducks, and last Friday, someone stole three horses, but the horses have since been found."

To save money, she has reduced the amount of feed her horses receive from 18 pounds to 16 pounds a week. With a 10 percent reduction in feed, the available food lasted longer.

At one point, she started losing sleep, even developed ulcers, and scheduled weekly therapy sessions for herself because it was just too much.

"I kept thinking about what I would have done with all these horses if I hadn't made it through. It was really scary and that fear hasn't gone away now. Because we don't know when this is going to end."

Despite the challenges, her spirits are high, and Jennifer Olah has already seen tourism start to bounce back. The island is open again, and with more tourists arriving by plane over the past few months, there are lines at some of the island's popular restaurants.

"We've barely survived, and we're still adjusting," she said. But tours are back in operation, although numbers are still lower than before the outbreak, with an average of 15 visitors a week, compared to 25.

Jennifer Olah said: "I think the vaccine has given people some confidence that they can start moving around. We've had a lot of health professionals visiting us recently. I even took four nurses on a tour of the horse farm yesterday."

This article was compiled from "A Year Without Travel," published on March 8, 2021 by The New York Times.