Why wildfires pose an existential threat to California tourism - San Francisco Chronicle

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Guests who checked into the Westin Monache hotel in Mammoth Lakes this past summer were welcomed with an odd complimentary item: N95 masks, the kind you may have seen covering the faces of residents of Beijing, where smog is so bad it is known as the “airpocalypse.”

The Lions Fire was incinerating part of the Sierra Nevada’s Ansel Adams Wilderness nearby, producing plumes of hazardous smoke that settled in the air for weeks. Guests at the hotel were even seen wearing their masks while lounging on the hotel’s pool deck, as smoke permeated the normally pristine High Sierra air.

Similar masks were handed out at hotels throughout San Francisco in November, after air purifier company IQAir rated the city as having the worst air quality in any of the world’s major cities. Out of concern, the five-star Omni hotel welcomed guests with complimentary bottles of fruit-infused water and individually wrapped cold towelettes scented with lavender oil, gave suggestions on how to visit San Francisco without being outdoors and offered N95 masks, while air purifiers hummed in the lobby.

Has the ever-expanding wildfire season brought about, as Gov. Jerry Brown has suggested, a “new abnormal” for California travelers?

The short answer is yes.

“New abnormal” was the expression Brown used when describing the spate of recent wildfires that have decimated the state. He predicted they will intensify and continue for the foreseeable future. “We have a real challenge here, threatening our whole way of life,” Brown said at a press briefing in November during the Woolsey and Camp fires.

“Just look at the Sierra on Google Earth,” says John Koeberer, CEO of the California Parks Co., which operates campgrounds, lodging and marina concessions on public lands. “The forest is orange from all the dead trees. It used to be green.”

Enjoying the natural beauty of California’s outdoors has been a beloved aspect of the state’s lifestyle since John Muir proclaimed that “wildness is a necessity.” But it is being threatened as the frequency and severity of wildfires have grown in recent years — decimating parks and forestland, blanketing the state in toxic air, and driving people indoors. The reasons are many: a long history of poor forest-management policy, aging utilities infrastructure, climate change, more human activity in natural places.

The immediate toll on the affected people, communities and environments can’t be overstated — many have lost everything. What is concerning is that the recent spate of fires is not an isolated incident, as Californians well know, and the situation appears to be getting worse.

Between 1984 and 2010, the number of wildfire acres that burned at high intensity rose by 50 percent, and consumed more than 60 million dead trees in our forests, according to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state-run nonprofit focused on conservation efforts.

“Right now, the Sierra Nevada region is at a critical point. A century of fire suppression, a shortage of restoration efforts and years of drought have placed Sierra forests ... at incredible risk,” according to the conservancy.

We are set up to travel this cycle of suffering and grief again and again. And because upwards of 80 percent of California tourism is generated by in-state residents, we aren’t losing tourism attractions, we’re losing a pillar of our way of life. This could easily mean fewer opportunities to camp and recreate outdoors or visit rural places in California.

The fires and smoke aren’t going away — but the travelers might.

In just the past three years, a visitor’s guide-full of California destinations has been singed or suffocated by wildfires — from Yosemite to Wine Country and Malibu to Lake Shasta. Seven notable wildfires occurred in 2016, four in 2017 and five in 2018, incinerating over 1.75 million acres, destroying over 24,000 homes and structures, displacing hundreds of thousands of Californians and, tragically, taking the lives of more than 120 residents and firefighters.

Despite the number of affected areas, little tourism infrastructure — hotels, attractions, wineries, trails — burned. The greatest impact has been to public lands that depend on entrance fees for operations and improvements, and to their local communities.

For example, the Whiskeytown and Santa Monica Mountains national recreation areas, which sustained major damage in recent wildfires, are beloved and used by nearby residents, not just out-of-towners.

“There is an emotional connection to our visitors,” said Whiskeytown National Recreation Area spokeswoman Jen Gibson. “They just want to be here. They love this park.”

But those local visitors have now lost access to the parks, and the parks have lost income from visitor entry fees.

The flames don’t just drive people from the immediate areas, they also cast an ominous shadow over associated destinations. For instance, during the 2017 wildfires in Napa and Sonoma counties, social media-fueled commentary fed the misimpression that all California’s wine-growing areas were ablaze. The result: mass cancellations and alarm across unaffected wine regions. Areas that were directly affected were treated as quarantine zones. Travelers were reluctant to visit, thinking they would be interfering with recovery efforts, or that their experience wouldn’t be as good, even as tasting rooms remained open, restaurants set empty tables and lodging was widely available.

Because international and out-of-state travelers book trips far in advance, they’re less likely to change plans when a wildfire occurs. They either don’t show, purchase travel insurance or stick to their itineraries and ride out the discomfort. Those initial losses are particularly hard for small tourism communities to overcome.

Californians, on the other hand, quickly adapt their plans and change reservations. As a result, we’ve seen travel to wildfire-affected destinations return to near normal within weeks. During the recent Paradise and Malibu (Camp and Woolsey) fires, for instance, online travel agencies saw short-term dips of 10 to 11 percent, due to cancellations, postponements or relocation to other California destinations, according to Visit California president and CEO Caroline Beteta. After the dust settles, some tourist-dependent areas can get back on track relatively quickly.

“Napa and Sonoma reported being up in 2018 over 2017 when the Wine Country fires happened,” Beteta said. “Napa had bounced back within two months.”

But not every California destination is as popular as Napa, and many suffer far greater damage.

Wildfires hurt most in rural California — those places most dependent on clean air and quality outdoor experiences to entice visitors. Tourism businesses in forested areas — which often have short operating seasons — may not survive “the new abnormal.”

“The Carr Fire (in Redding) occurred in the middle of summer and it broke our back,” Koeberer says. “We never really came out of it, even after the fire was out. People didn’t return to Shasta or Lassen Volcanic (National Park), even though the fires were out.”

Wildfire effects extend beyond the burn areas. Smoke travels for hundreds of miles and destroys the travel experience by making a casual visit both unpleasant and unhealthy. The issue then filters down to the businesses and infrastructure supporting tourism: campgrounds, lakes, resorts, outfitters, lodges, retailers and restaurants.

In Southern California, where Koeberer’s company operates campgrounds at Lake Hemet, “the fire almost made it to our back door, but it was the economic hit that nearly broke us,” he said. Koeberer has had difficulty getting a bank loan to finance improvements, as well as fire insurance and business interruption insurance.

“If you can’t insure outdoors-based facilities, you can’t improve or operate them,” Koeberer said. “The banks are going to back off.”

Measuring the immediate and long-term economic impact of wildfire on travel and tourism is complicated: Reporting on hotel occupancy and tax receipts typically takes up to 18 months; poor tourist occupancy of hotels in the immediate area of a wildfire is often offset by displaced residents and recovery workers; and research does not usually connect declines in tourism, beyond the immediate area, to the cause of the decline.

Other ripple effects are even tougher to guage but can be consequential.

An executive at a large California-based outdoor business who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect his company’s relationships with destinations and public agencies, told The Chronicle that the effect of wildfires has gotten so bad he is no longer looking to expand his outdoor recreation and tourism company inside the state and is now seeking similar opportunities outside California. “And I’m not the only one,” he said. “It’s a big, big story.”

What this means for California travelers is that the places we go and the things we love to do in the outdoors may be suffocated long term, not just during the ever-expanding fire season.

Welcome to the new abnormal.

John Poimiroo is California’s former state tourism director and an active outdoor and travel writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com

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