Interview: Laurie Paolicelli

evolving by having their waitstaff work as delivery people (with much of their income supplemented by tips, the dearth of in-house customers was especially problematic for this segment of the industry). To counter this drop in traffic, the North Carolina state government allowed restaurants to permit outside seating in zones normally relegated to pedestrians.

When diners and revelers were allowed back, it was required that there be capacity limits while customers had to follow social distancing and maskwearing guidelines. It was not until May 2021, with the vaccination campaign in full swing, that Cooper was able to lift most restrictions. For many, however, the damage was complete, with their doors remaining indefinitely shuddered.

Now that establishments are re-opening, restaurants are facing a different challenge: the inability to hire and retain staff. To make ends meet at the beginning of the pandemic, there were massive layoffs across the industry. Now, with an equally rapid full re-opening in swing, owners and managers are needing to fill these positions but they are having a hard time locating suitably experienced employees. In Durham alone, 70% of hospitality businesses have been affected by labor shortages, with over 60% saying that these shortages pose a threat to their viability. Some businesses are resorting to creative tactics to staff their establishments: Raleigh’s 42nd Street Oyster Bar and Seafood Grill is turning to social media more aggressively than ever before to advertise vacancies, has instituted a signing bonus and even a referral bonus whereby customers receive a $100 gift card if they recommend a new employee, according to a report on public radio station WUNC’s website. This issue points to a greater one in the American labor market: with so many receiving weekly government unemployment aid, there is little incentive to go out and work for what is often less money.

Raleigh-Durham International The dearth in tourists brought passenger traffic at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) to levels not seen since 1987. This on the back of a record-breaking 2019, when 14.2 million passengers traveled through the airport. In contrast, 2020 saw only 4.9 million; the entire month of April 2020 saw 40,000 passengers, the same number for a single day in April 2019. This staggering decline was showing glimpses of recovery at the end of the year when, in December, passenger numbers had climbed back to 112,000 but this was still a 56% decline over December 2019.

Not surprisingly, RDU had to adapt. Anti-COVID measures — social distancing markers, sanitation ( ) Laurie Paolicelli

Executive Director Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau

How have you adapted your role due to the pandemic?

After a couple of months of lockdown, we realized that the locals really wanted to explore more of their backyard. This is not a traditional market for us. We focus more on everything but the locals. We shifted gear and used this pandemic as a silver lining, telling our several thousand locals that they have a terrific backyard here. A lot of people here had lost their jobs in the hospitality industry and wanted to come back to work. We said, let’s partner, let us help you understand everything in your backyard and help you come back to work. So that’s what we did. We shifted and made the local residents our primary market. We created a colorful, illustrated map of the county and we reached out to local media to let them know what was going on. When the federal relief money from the CARES Act came through, we did a major blitz around a hundred-mile radius and said, we know you’re getting cabin fever, why not drive over to one of the coolest college towns in North Carolina and check out what we have to offer.

What local partnerships have you sought to promote tourism in the region?

We started talking to our hotels daily. We started talking to our public health officials, which was new to us. We started a partnership with tourism and public health, helping them to extend their message. We started partnering with local creative people to design masks and safety posters. I also give credit to The Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro, which really took a leadership role and brought a lot of us together every week. It would be more apt to say that I was part of a partnership rather than created a partnership. We sat down as a visitor bureau staff, put a mirror up to ourselves and asked, what has to change?

We really learned a lot during this experience and now is the time to see how we are going to come out of this. We used it as a chance to strengthen our conversations internally.