By Stephen Mills; Group1A
Financial crisis, economic slow down, recession, despite how you want to refer to what is happening to the economy in the US everyone is being affected. Among those affected are many tourist towns. Businesses located in tourist areas throughout the United States are facing huge losses in sales and customers for that matter. "We could be handing out $20 bills and we couldn't get people in.” (msnbc.com p6)
Even the United States' largest tourist attractor is experiencing major losses in income and are facing mass layoffs. Walt Disney World has released a statement explaining large income losses and they will begin layoffs as soon as this week. Large businesses such as Disney are not the only ones to be affected; many small businesses located on the outskirts of these larger tourist attractions are being affected on an even larger scale. One small restaurant located in downtown Orlando gets all their business from tourists coming to visit the amusement parks at Disney. With the slowdown of customers due to the recession the owner of the store has had to drop all their employees hours to part time shifts and pick up the remaining hours herself. "It's killing me, but it's working." (Pom, p10. Cnn.com)
On the upside not everyone is under water from this economic slowdown. For instance small towns located on the outskirts of large cities are experiencing higher incomes than ever before. Many small towns near Philadelphia are gaining double digit increases in the percent of customers they are gaining this year due to many families new plan to conserve money by going on weekend trips to local destinations.
Overall the tourist industry in the United States is in dire need to be restructured and consolidated if it wants to survive in this new economy.
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