Resorts, hotels, workers and guests are hit yet again by a stay-at-home order limiting travel.

Winter is typically a slow time for resorts and hotels in Monterey County, except the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Pebble Beach Resorts usually furloughs staff after the holidays until business picks up before the AT&T golf tournament in February. This year employees are losing almost two more weeks of work after the latest Covid-19 stay-at-home order went into effect on Dec. 13, prohibiting all non-essential travel until at least Jan. 11. The company furloughed 900 employees and temporarily shuttered its resorts.

Golf and other outdoor activities continue but all the hotels and restaurants in Pebble Beach are closed, save for takeout from the Gallery Café and Pebble Beach Market. It’s a similar story at other resorts that cater to leisure travelers. How many guests were booked between Dec. 14 and Jan. 11 whose stays had to be canceled or rescheduled is unknown. (Pebble Beach representatives declined to answer questions.)

Non-resort hotels also canceled holiday reservations and scaled down operations to accommodate essential travelers only. To remain open to tourists could mean civil penalties for unfair business practices, according to District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni.

The December-January shutdown might mean an estimated $140 million loss in visitor spending, says Rob O’Keefe, president and CEO of the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The total loss for 2020 could top $2 billion – roughly a 65-percent loss compared to 2019. Besides the loss of revenue to businesses and local governments, the loss of hospitality jobs is significant, he says: “That’s a lot of people without a job and a paycheck at the holiday season.”

Randy Venard, vice president and general manager of the Inns of Monterey, says the number of canceled reservations is “certainly in the hundreds” for the five hotels in the brand, including Casa Munras and Monterey Bay Inn. Earlier in the year essential travelers included nurses, agricultural company representatives, PG&E crews and people who came to check on elderly relatives.

“It’s obviously been a significant impact this year,” Venard says of the shutdowns, along with the summer’s wildfires. He calls the timing of the latest stay-at-home order “good news and bad news,” since the two weeks leading up to Christmas are the slowest weeks of the year for the inns.

Another positive: hotels now have sanitation protocols already in place, unlike the first shutdown when staff scrambled to develop new methods.

One hotel reopening for the first time since March is the Portola Hotel & Spa. Dependent on conferences for income, the hotel laid off 300 employees immediately when SIP was announced, with no plans to reopen until conferences resumed, which they have not.

“You can’t stay closed forever,” General Manager Janine Chicourrat says. “We wanted to create a few jobs before year-end.” It took four weeks to get the hotel ready for essential travelers after nine months of closure. (Food service and the spa remained closed.)

Chicourrat, incoming chair of the Monterey County Hospitality Association, says that while the impact of the order on the local hospitality industry is tremendous, “on the flip-side we’re truly supportive because of the pandemic.”