Thanksgiving has come and gone, and if you’ve turned on an FM radio in the past week or so then you know that Christmas is barreling down the tracks. As the holiday season rolls on, it is popular knowledge that this is the time when local businesses and services “get their nut.” I do wonder if that is the case this year however. It seems to me that there have been surges of higher traffic, but in general the total population and visitation to the island has been slow. It seems to me that there are less cars on the road, people on the walk-ways, and more space on the beach these last couple weeks than I remember being there just a week ago.
Now maybe I am wrong, and I would love your opinion as to what you think about the current state of travelers. However, it seems to me that the years post pandemic there was a burst in travel as everyone was just looking to get out of the house, but now either folks aren’t traveling as much or they just aren’t coming to the Islands. It seems that this is a common belief even across multiple services and industries that I myself am involved in. At the restaurant I work at I have also noticed surges in vacancy of tables. In the restaurant I used to be able to semi-predict when we would be busy and not, but now there is seemingly no rhyme or reason to the days or even the hours when we will have an influx of guests.
The next question that begs to be asked is, “If this is true and the tourist season is slow, is that a good or a bad thing for our island?” I don’t know that I can answer this myself, but I think both sides of the argument prevail. There is good and there is bad that would come from a down year.