Local hospitality industry perseveres through pandemic

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  • The driveway up to the Richmond Inn in Spruce Pine sits ready for visitors to venture up for a stay. Owner Maggie Haskell said the pandemic has changed things drastically for her and her business. She said the pandemic cost her business several of its seasonal regulars. (MNJ photo/Cory Spiers)
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SPRUCE PINE — As restrictions regarding the ongoing pandemic ease and people are treating their cabin fever with vacations, the local hospitality industry is slowly but surely getting back on its feet after a big blow earlier this year. 

“It’s been pretty excruciating,”  Skyline Village Inn Owner Mike Thrift said. “We’re a seasonal hotel, open from March through October and when we went to open our doors in March, we were here maybe two days before we got the order that we had to close up. That was not fun at all.”

Thrift said after not having any income for two months, they were able to open in mid-May. They only made about one third of what they usually make for the month. 

“We did a little better in June and a little bit better through July, but it’s been massively inconvenient,” Thrift said. “We’re recovering now, but it’s still up and down.”

Springmaid Mountain Manager Joe Glenn said when the pandemic hit, they made the decision to close for six weeks. 

“We laid all the employees off except the maintenance person and myself,” Glenn said. “We canceled all weddings and events and they are still canceled until the governor moves us into phase three.”

After six weeks, Glenn said they opened their cabins, brought back staff and opened up most activities including hiking trails, self-guided tubing trips and horseback rides with a limited number of guests on each ride. 

Springmaid did not reopen campgrounds, however, due to unfinished renovations.

“It has certainly made us change the way we do things, but we are open and our business is doing well,” Glenn said.

Maggie Haskell, the owner of the Richmond Inn in Spruce Pine, said she was most significantly impacted in the spring.

“Initially, when they first announced, I had people instantly cancel who book a year in advance and take, like, 10 rooms,” she said. “It’s definitely impacted our occupancy and, of course, the income which has affected the people I employ the most. If there’s nothing to do and no money coming in, they’re the ones that are hurting most.”

Haskell said the biggest change due to COVID-19 has been seen in sanitation and safety practices.

“We’re trying to do everything and keep up so we can protect our guests,” she said. “We have masks available. We sanitize everything more thoroughly and we no longer clean and turn down rooms while our guests are there. We wait until they depart so we don’t cross-contaminate going from one room to another and do all of that.”

Thrift said his inn’s sanitation practices have changed drastically, too. 

“We try to make them feel safe, so we’re taking a lot of extra measures that we usually don’t,” he said. “We started putting ozonators in the rooms to disinfect the air and kill viruses and bacteria and then we’ve bought some chlorhexidine which is a hospital grade sanitizer that we spray on high-touch areas like countertops and light switches.”

Although it was a big change, Thrift said he plans to continue many of the extra steps they have implemented.

“We’ve learned a lot from it and there’s a lot of things that we weren’t doing that we are doing now and we want to continue doing,” he said. 

Thrift added he is trying to provide as much safety and normalcy for his guests during the uncertain time. 

“We want to continue operations as normally as possible and I think that’s one of the attractions of this area,” Thrift said. “It just feels more normal here. Some of the places these people are coming from have bigger populations and are having to deal with a lot more cases than here. It’s been a problem to deal with for sure, but we’re going to get through it.”