SANTA ROSA, Calif. — The northern California wildfires left most towns and tourist attractions standing, but heavy smoke and high winds brought wine country tourism to a standstill during the busiest month of the year.
Many outdoor sporting events also were cancelled due to thick smoke that blew miles away from the numerous fires.
That, in turn, directly affected the motorcoach industry in the area.
“We have had thousands of dollars of cancelled trips because people didn’t want to risk going into the wine country,” said Eric Lea, general manager of All West Coach Lines in Sacramento. “We also had a lot of high school and college teams cancel football games and track and cross-country meets due to the air quality.”
Lea said the smoke got so bad, “I walked out my front door and it smelled like somebody had a campfire in my front yard. We couldn’t see the sun some days.”
Gary Buffo, president of Pure Luxury Transportation in Petaluma, Calif., said that other than the town of Santa Rosa, which really got hit hard, the fires were isolated to the mountainous areas around the wine country.
“The biggest issue for us was the smoke,” he said. “It was brutal.”
Some news reports gave tourists the impression that the Napa and Sonoma valleys and their famed wineries also were leveled, Buffo said.
“We have had calls from as far away as China stating that the media reported that Sonoma and Napa no longer exist, which hasn’t helped the cause,” he said.
Nonetheless, smoke did force wineries, hotels and restaurants in the valleys to close their doors.
October bookings for Pure Luxury were down 19 percent from last year, Buffo said.
“October is the busiest month for everybody in the valley. That is the month that puts us all through February as far as the budget is concerned. Having this happen in October is not real good for the transportation industry here. It is bad timing.”
Wine tours account for about 20 percent of the annual site visit business for Gray Line of San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Monterey, said Ray Sargoni, president and chief executive officer.
“We had two to three buses a day, 100 to 150 passengers, going to Napa and Sonoma before we had to stop going there,” Sargoni said. “We created another wine tour a few days ago to Livermore Valley. That has brought us about a 30 percent recovery.”
Livermore is southeast of San Francisco and the more famous Sonoma-Napa wine regions.
The first of the wildfires, driven by dry conditions and high winds, were reported about October 8. Though the fires had been largely contained, significant burning continued into the last week of October.
The Sacramento Bee newspaper reported that the fires had burned about 200,000 acres (330 square miles), equivalent to the cities of Sacramento, Fresno, San Francisco and Oakland combined. Before the end of October, state officials reported that 42 people had been killed and 7,000 structures destroyed. Moody’s Investors Service estimated that insurance losses could reach $4.6 billion.
There is hope that northern California can rebound quickly.
“Right now we are talking to the Napa and Sonoma wineries to see when we can resume those trips,” Sargoni said. “We had a very nice rainstorm last night, but there are still pockets of fire and the air quality is not 100 percent.”
Lea suggested tour operators would need to package other trips for November visitors.
“We will get creative. There are other wineries and other places to go. The people from one of our sightseeing trips to wine country decided to run anyway, so we quickly had to create an entirely new itinerary. We pulled it together.”
Buffo noted that the entire region has pulled together to restore not only its tourism but also the lives of its employees and residents.
“People lost their homes in an area where housing is really tough to begin with. A majority of hotel rooms are filled with the victims. That is going to be the biggest obstacle for us to overcome for the tourists,” Buffo said.
“Although this has been a terrible, terrible situation, it has been comforting to see that everybody is working together to take care of the victims who lost everything and to rebuild the community back to what we are used to having.”
Buffo has appreciated the calls he has received from motorcoach operators across the country seeking assurances that his team was safe.
“The greatest support for us would be for people to come out here and support the wineries,” he said. “We have chauffeurs and bus drivers who need to work, employees at every single hotel, restaurant and winery who need to work. Just coming in to shake our hands and give us a hug, that would be huge.”
