Barkeep and restaurateur Niall Hanley poured his first draft beer at age 10 in his home country of Ireland and found his way to Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1998. There, he runs the Hibernian Hospitality Group, a constellation of bars, beer gardens, and restaurants spread across Raleigh neighborhoods, including a mammoth beer hall boasting 369 brews on tap. One could say he’s comfortable behind the bar. 

It’s a perch that’s given him plenty of insight into the economic challenges facing his adopted city, especially the slow recovery of businesses downtown as the effects of the pandemic recede. Bars like the Station, his location in Oakwood, just north of the central business district, rely on an ecosystem of customers and events, from business lunches and happy-hour gatherings to conventioneers and tourists, that was all but destroyed by Covid-19. Though North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has announced that statewide Covid restrictions will end June 1, that ecosystem is still fragile, even fallow. 

“We’re kind of emerging after the fire has blown over the woods and forest,” he says. “Everyone is re-emerging and rebuilding. How do you plan for this, you know?”

Hanley’s venues have sat empty or partially empty for months. The lack of business travel, in-person office workers, and tourism have done “collective damage,” Hanley says. “It’s challenging for everyone,” he says. “I hope the lack of domestic business travel may be met by pent-up demand from our locals.”

Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin says downtown is slowly recovering, but offices for downtown firms such as Red Hat and Citrix are largely empty as many workers remain at home.  The lack of business and convention activity has been devastating to the region’s hospitality sector — 66% of surrounding Wake County’s 67,000-person workforce was laid off or furloughed during the pandemic. 

“The real challenge for our downtown is that our major employers are not working downtown,” says Baldwin. “Everyone is working at home. That is the challenge: When are major employers going to bring people back to work? Citrix is saying mid-July. Red Hat says September 1.” 

Bill King, president and CEO of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, says hotel occupancy has hovered around 45% for weeks, when it’s normally about 85% this time of year. “This market has been very dependent on corporate and business travel during the week, and this will be one of the last markets to return,” King says. 

As in cities across the U.S., officials in Raleigh are looking for ways to spark activity and spending in business districts left deserted by the pandemic. Many are pinning their hopes on summer visitors from neighboring cities and states who are looking for easily drivable getaways. “With international tourism down and travel restrictions on 80% of the world’s countries, local dollars, and North Carolinians coming to visit, becomes very important,” says Beth Friedrich, who served as the city’s economic development manager in 2020. 

To convince vacationers to spend a weekend downtown, the region’s marketing has adopted a pandemic-era twist. North Carolina’s “Get Back to a Better Place” campaign, unveiled in late April, highlights the state’s natural resources, including forests and beaches, as well the urban outdoor experience in places like Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Park. (One image shows a solitary hotel guest alone on a rooftop in nearby Durham.) 

“We’re trying to show our urban areas aren’t all densely packed,” says Wit Tuttell, executive director of Visit NC. “There’s space, there’s green, there’s beauty. We’re trying to let people know we’re ready to host them in a way that keeps people safe.” 

Part of Raleigh’s strategy includes assistance from short-term rental giant Airbnb. The company’s City Portal, a data dashboard released to several city partners last year to help address safety concerns, is also being used by city leaders and tourism officials to target marketing messages. Laphonza Butler, Airbnb’s head of public affairs for North America, says the program can provide cities with visitor information and even help place marketing material in rooms on the platform. (Airbnb is now working with 100 such groups in 20 countries). “Travel is returning, but the way people travel is changing,” says Butler. “While trips to large urban centers were typical pre-pandemic, now people are moving to destinations a tank of gas away.” 

There are several signs that travel demand in the U.S. is poised to explode this summer and fall. Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for CoStar Group, says that vaccinated Americans feel much more comfortable traveling and will focus on domestic destinations. “Two shots plus two weeks makes for good travel demand,” he says. 

Vered Schwarz, president of Guesty, a popular software program for hosts to manage their short-term rental properties, says summer 2021 reservations are not just 282% over 2020 levels, but 32% over what was seen in 2019. She calls the expected boom “revenge travel.” 

“Across the board, we see people going back to travel,” she says. “The length of stays are longer, too, compensating for the lack of vacation last year.” 

One question for cities is: Will visitors feel ready to come back for urban attractions like restaurants, museums, and theater? With many facets of post-pandemic life still uncertain, the competition for travel dollars may be fierce. Illinois just launched the $6 million “Time for Me to Drive” campaign, focused on road trippers, while New York & Co., the Big Apple’s tourism office, is about to launch a $30 million campaign, “NYC Reawakens,” its largest ever. 

For smaller, less-well-known tourist destinations, officials see summer 2021 as a rare chance to reset travel habits and perhaps introduce themselves to a new crowd. “People tend to travel in patterns, so when you disrupt those patterns, you can gain and lose that market share,” says Tuttell of Visit NC. “It’s an opportunity, but one we have to carefully plan out and orchestrate so we don’t abuse it.” 

Raleigh’s resurgent downtown tracked with the larger trend towards rediscovering midsize cities and favoring urban living. In the decade before the pandemic, downtown visitation had increased 50%, King says, fueled by a growing restaurant scene, including a number of James Beard-winning establishments, and events such as the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual festival. “People were coming downtown to experience dining and something experiential,” says King. “We were seeing a new type of visitation.” 

But that momentum hit a brick wall with the pandemic. Kerry Painter, director and general manager of Raleigh’s convention and performing arts complex, which typically holds 1,300 events annually, has seen bookings fill up for 2023 and 2024, but the immediate calendar remains relatively sparse. Covid event cancellations cost the city more than $203 million in economic impact, representing nearly 400 events and more than a half-million estimated attendees. Right now, shows at city amphitheaters and theaters can play at 25% capacity, but Painter says it took Governor Cooper’s announcement that restrictions would end June 1 to save the summer concert season (most concerts and performances don’t make money without selling 75% or 80% of tickets). She’s hoping some conventions begin booking for late fall. 

“It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation,” she says. “The more lively downtown becomes, the more workers will make the choice to come to their offices. But until we can get them back to their offices, it’s hard to complete that circle.” 

Some efforts to lure summer visitors to cities could be hamstrung by ongoing Covid-related cancellations. Baltimore, for example, won’t be holding Artscape, the nation’s largest free arts festival, which usually brings crowds of 300,000 people and some $30 million in economic impact to the city each July. The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival was pushed back to a to-be-announced date this fall, while the Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show, originally set for May, canceled all events.

Instead of blockbuster events, Raleigh plans to focus on luring visiting Carolinians and others to outdoor spaces. King says that efforts to set up parklets and pedlets across town to create outdoor dining and event space have been successful, and the Dine Out Downtown events on Saturdays, which take over a city block and set up tables and stages for performances by local music, have been packed every night. “The approach will be, how can we use the public realm well?” he says. “We’re getting out of the phase of parking cones and spray-paint solutions and into something more durable.”

Re-energizing downtown can’t come soon enough for Hanley. There are more signs of life. The airport is getting busier; the trickle of workers commuting into downtown offices is getting stronger. His locations in the Glenwood South neighborhood have limped through and have seen an uptick in business. But at least for the next few months, as vaccinated Americans slowly re-emerge, it’s a waiting game. 

“There’s nothing to do but hold on,” Hanley says. “Once we get to that certain magic number of people, then it’ll just change.”