Hotels prepare for the possibility that the Monterey Peninsula will become an island due to flooding.

Up until Wednesday, hotels on the Monterey Peninsula were gearing up to greet visitors checking in for a three-day holiday weekend. Then the news landed in the late afternoon that the Salinas River may flood at every bridge that connects the Peninsula to the rest of the county, turning the region into one big island.

Suddenly, hotel owners were faced with the challenge of what to do about employees who live outside of the Peninsula. 

"The message is if you live on the other side of the river you need to plan," says Janine Chicourrat, who serves on the board of the Monterey County Hospitality Association as its past chair. Employees either need to not come in to work or be prepared to stay should the roads be cut off.

Chicourrat, also general manager of the Portola Hotel in downtown Monterey, was on the phone with her employees Wednesday night to let them know what might happen if the roads do close, although she says the hotel is fortunate since 85 percent of Portola's employees live on the Peninsula.

"My biggest fear is [the river] is not going to crest and we're going to be running very low occupancy," on a holiday weekend when normally they'd be more full, she says, adding that "you have to err the side of caution for both your guests and your employees."

Hotels, including the Portola, are now seeing cancellations "across the board," she says, since the news of closures starting spreading in the San Francisco Bay Area, a prime source of weekend drive-in visitors. They're also experiencing early checkouts as guests try to escape before potential closures.

Normally hotel occupancy in January is low, around 50 percent, except for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, says Rob O'Keefe, president and CEO of the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"The three-day weekend is a big weekend and a lost opportunity if people can't get here. We need to stress 'if' because it could happen...but there's also a chance it won't happen," he says.

"If the flood doesn't close all of it, it's still worth it to go to these lengths to keep everyone safe," says O'Keefe.

The main message, he says, is safety for both employees and visitors so "no one will get stuck by accident."

If the Peninsula does close to vehicle traffic Monterey Regional Airport will still be open, O'Keefe points out. For visitors who do come there's still a lot to do in the region from Marina to Big Sur, where Highway 1 is closed just south of Deetjen's Inn. If it's too rainy to venture outside, the bureau recently posted a list of ideas for things to do locally on a rainy day.

The bureau is cautioning people to obey signs for road closures and stay out of potentially dangerous areas. It's keeping a "Travel Alerts" page on its website updated, found here.

Since last week's storms the list of hotels offering special rates for residents impacted by flood waters has grown to over a dozen Peninsula hotels from Marina to Carmel. (See PDF here.) Some hotels that don't normally allow pets are accepting them during the emergency.

"They're making sure residents who are impacted have options," says O'Keefe.