“‘Hope’,” poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “is a thing with feathers / That perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words / And never stops — at all.”
Hope, that thing that never stops, carried local hotels through 2020, the first rough year of the COVID-19 pandemic — hope and a little government assistance.
“Thank God for stimuluses,” Maulik Chaudhari, manager of the AmericInn in Madison, said with great frankness. “Help the government has been giving has been a blessing.”
When the pandemic reached South Dakota in March 2020, the number of those infected and dying in the U.S. was increasing daily, the White House was advising those in New York City and the metro area to self-quarantine, Spain had requested NATO assistance in tackling the pandemic, and New Zealand was heading for a lockdown.
Even South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who went on to gain national celebrity status for promoting personal freedom rather than basic precautions like masking, had closed schools across the state as a precaution. The hotel industry was immediately impacted.
“In the beginning, it was so bad, we contemplated: Do we need to shut down?” Chaudhari recalled.
The hotel industry in the Madison area relies heavily on family events, such as reunions and weddings; sports events, which bring both teams and fans to town; and those traveling for business. With family and sports events canceled and business conducted remotely via Zoom or other conferencing software, that industry was among the first to appreciate the economic impact of the pandemic.
“We would have one customer at times, or no customers,” Chaudhari reported.
AmericInn is one of three hotels in Madison. Like the AmericInn, the Super 8 was also hit hard by the pandemic. Manager Rupal Patel said that she is now the only employee.
“I can do it myself,” she said, adding that her son is available to help if she needs assistance.
Prior to the pandemic, she had two housekeepers and one assistant at the desk to help with the 34-room hotel. With the slow business, she does not believe it’s fair to hire anyone.
John Cozad is manager of the Best Western Plus Lakeview Hotel, which opened in October 2019 with 70 rooms, a sleek contemporary appearance and the special amenities which enable it to carry the “Plus” designation. He said that with the pandemic, the new hotel did not begin to meet first-year projections.
“It devastated the whole industry,” he said, referencing statistics from the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
An AHLA report released in January began with an Executive Summary stating, “The hotel industry experienced the most devastating year on record in 2020, resulting in historically low occupancy, massive job loss, and hotel…
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