Cajun Coast focuses on attracting staycations

The tourism industry has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and locally, things are slower compared to years’ past.
Cajun Coast Visitors & Convention Bureau Executive Director Carrie Stansbury said that regardless of where you are nationwide, family and friends are an area’s No. 1 market.
“Particularly during the summer, you’re going to get families that are going to come in, spend time, and they come in here and they do all the attractions,” Stansbury said.
She said those families and friends are not coming like they usually do because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“New Orleans is a feeder market to some degree, and because New Orleans is so tight with their restrictions, we’re not getting those people that would fly into New Orleans and then travel outside,” Stansbury said.
While she said people want to travel, they are just apprehensive about it.
“People are eager to travel. They just don’t know,” she said.
Other local gatherings and meetings have been canceled, too, Stansbury said.
Recently, the 85th Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival, which Stansbury said is the area’s biggest tourism draw each year, was canceled.
“It’s the biggest draw, because you have so many international and national people coming in,” she said.
To try to counteract the lost revenue due to outside visitors not coming in, the state has begun marketing staycations, trying to attract locals to explore their area attractions, Stansbury said.
Among the staycations that the local visitors and convention bureau has assembled and will be advertising are ones individually for Morgan City, Cypremort and Burns points, cities of Patterson and Franklin and the town of Berwick.
With a slow time also has meant furloughs of travel counselors at the Cajun Coast Visitors and Convention Bureau, Stansbury said.
“There’s only three of us working right now, and we are getting visitors, but it’s nowhere near (what it was). Like today was a pretty busy day,” Stansbury said Tuesday. “We’ve only had about 10 people that came today, true visitors, not just stopping to go to the bathroom.”
Normally, that number would be triple the amount right now.
“We’re open Monday through Friday,” Stansbury said. “We’re not open on the weekends, because we don’t have the employees, and financially, it just doesn’t make sense to stay open on weekends.”
However, she said there is information available outside the building, and the bureau’s website is available at all times for those interested in exploring the area.
Stansbury said nearly every St. Mary Parish attraction is open, except for the Chitimacha Reservation, and camping is a popular option at the moment.
“St. Mary Parish will probably recover faster than, say, New Orleans or Baton Rouge, because we do have those outdoor activities,” she said. “We have the bird watching, we have the paddling, we have some wonderful camp grounds. You can go fishing. There are lots of things you can do outside.”
As for any possible comparison to the current situation, Stansbury said maybe post-hurricanes Katrina and Rita, because images of flooding shown repeatedly on the news even after it subsided resonated with potential travelers for a while.
“This is just so, so different, because at least Rita and Katrina, you knew things were going to get better because we had experience with major hurricanes, but this is just so different because nobody knows what’s going on,” she said noting that plans could be made but they could change at a moment’s notice depending on governmental mandates.