In Williamstown, 'An Odd Summer' as Merchants See Drop in Tourism
The Williamstown Theatre Festival came back from the pandemic in 2021 with 64 performances, including three outdoor shows. This year, there were a total of 26 performances during a one-month run.
Last weekend, when the curtain dropped on a curtailed WTF season, it was clear those concerns were valid.
"What we have seen in the last 15 or 16 years is people love to stay in North County," said Ashwan Malhotra, owner of the Maple Terrace hotel on Main Street. "They come here and go to the theater festival and the museums, and they might go south for a day to go to Tanglewood or go to Shakespeare & Company … because Williamstown is less expensive. They pay a lot more money to stay in Lenox.
"That six- or seven-night stay, we're going to lose that. There's no reason to stay in Williamstown. They will stay in South County, and they might come up to go to the Clark or go to Mass MoCA, because those are day trips. That's what their feedback is, if there's no theater in Williamstown."
"No theater" might be overstating things a bit, but there is no denying that the WTF offered less to keep people in town this summer than it has in years past.
The 2023 season at the Tony Award-winning festival featured no fully staged productions. It did offer four stand-up comedy dates, one solo concert, 12 sessions of staged readings and nine editions of the WTF Cabaret, a longtime festival staple not offered since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That is a total of 26 performances in all, as listed on the WTF website, from July 8 to Aug. 6.
To put that in perspective, in 2019, the WTF offered 122 performances of seven fully staged productions on two stages from June 25 to Aug. 18.
In 2021, while the pandemic still raged, WTF offered three outdoor shows, including a site-specific, experimental piece that took audiences through the streets of town, for a total of 64 performances. Last year, there were 65 performances of four shows in a season that ran from July 12 to Aug. 14.
Malhotra draws a direct line from the fact that the festival has had fewer offerings to the fact that this is the first summer he has seen summer bookings decline in 17 years in the hotel business in Williamstown.
"I have one regular guest I talk to a lot," Malhotra said. "He's been coming to the theater festival for about 26 or 27 years now, before I was here. He was disappointed the last couple of years, too, but this year, having no theater at all was a big deal for him."
And it is a big deal for the local economy, Malhotra said.
"After theater parties at bars and stuff was big business for Williamstown," he said. "One of the regular guests said he went to [a Spring Street restaurant] to eat, and there was only one other table with people. And that was the middle of summer."
Different business owners have different takes on the extent of the summer's decline and varying thoughts about the WTF's contribution to the trend.
"When the theater came out and said they weren't having a normal season, it did cause me concern," said Colleen Taylor, who operates three restaurants in North Adams, Freight Yard Pub, Craft Food Barn and Trail House Kitchen, near the Williamstown border. "We [usually] have a bump up in the summer, mostly because of Williamstown Theatre Festival. They do tend to bring a lot of people. Not only [audiences], but they also have a lot of staff working there.
"The first two weeks, I did notice it was not the season we anticipated. It's a slow season. I feel as though everybody is experiencing not the same season they usually have."
Taylor said she reached out to WTF interim Artistic Director Jenny Gersten to talk about what was going on, and Taylor both understood the reasons for the shortened season and appreciated the festival's plans for the future.
"It's easy to say it's their fault, but I don't think it's their fault," Taylor said. "It is what it is. The more important thing is, 'How can we help them? How do we make the future years better?'
"[Gersten] was very thoughtful, I have to say, in her response. It's not just one thing [driving the shorter season]. It was a series of things."
Taylor said the WTF has been transparent about its altered 2023 program and is making "a conscious effort for a resurgence."
She is not denying that it has been a challenging summer for businesses that count on a bump in revenue from summer tourists, but Taylor is more philosophical about it.
"I've been in business for 32 years in North Berkshire," she said. "We've had times when we struggled, and there were people who came to me and said, 'I know you're struggling. We're going to have a major Christmas party at your restaurant this year.' There are people who lifted me up over the years, and I'll never forget that.
"I do believe Williams College will [help the WTF]. We have wealthy people and organizations in the area who can help lift them up."
The president of the county's regional tourism council said it is way too soon to assess the numbers for the 2023 summer tourism season.
"We won't know how 2023 compares to 2022 until 2024," Jonathan Butler said.
"Obviously, Williamstown Theatre Festival is a major anchor, a major attraction and has driven a lot of activity in Williamstown for decades. A lot of businesses have been beneficiaries of that. That being said, we just went through consecutive summers — 2021 and 2022 — where the visitor economy bounced back in the Berkshires to exceed 2019 numbers while there still were some [COVID-19] limitations in the performing arts sector [in '21 and '22].
"Ultimately, we'll all look forward to seeing [WTF] return to the type of programming more historically experienced in Williamstown. That said, I think a lot of what's being said is more anecdotal than anything. But we'll pay attention to it and express our support."
Elinor Goodwin is one Williamstown small-business owner who is less dependent on the summer tourism trade. But her Spring Street location and connection to the business community gives her some perspective.
"I know restaurants and hotels struggled at the beginning of the week because the Williamstown Theatre Festival wasn't around at that time," said Goodwin, the owner of The Print Shop.
While a more traditional WTF season features performances on Tuesday through Sunday, the 2023 offerings ran just Thursday through Sunday.
"The one thing that people are always looking for in the summer is postcards," Goodwin said. "We have noticed with that sort of traffic for the gifty things we have, there are fewer tourists around for sure."
On the other side of Spring Street, the owner of Amy's Cottage has seen the same thing.
"We are hard hit by the lack of theater festival large main stage performances as well as not as many Overland campers coming through," Amy Ward said. "The main stage drives a high volume of tourism in town and we are certainly noticing a lower volume of foot traffic, perhaps 10 percent or more.
"There are still quite a few tourists, many come in wearing their Clark Art stickers, many here for day trips."
Many of the business owners and 1Berkshire's Butler reference the Clark Art Institute's season and its popular show, "Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth," as helping offset any loss in tourist visits related to the WTF.
"We have just completed a very strong July, marking our highest recorded attendance in the last three and a half years (the post-COVID era)," Clark Director of Communications Victoria Saltzman said.
Saltzman also echoed some of Taylor's comments about the festival, which has a history of joint programming with the South Street museum.
"We have a strong, collaborative relationship with the Festival and were pleased to welcome their Fridays@3 reading series back to the Clark's auditorium again this summer," Saltzman said. "The audiences who were here seemed enthusiastic and supportive and they definitely had some wonderful theatrical experiences during the sessions.
"Rebuilding after the pandemic is going to take time for all of the cultural venues, but we're confident that we will all find the right mix of programming that will help us all to grow stronger and remain the vibrant arts community that the Berkshires has cultivated over so many years."
That arts community, in part, helps make summer an important — if not critical — time for a host of Williamstown businesses.
Even at the Spring Street toy store Where'd You Get That!?, where mid-November to late December is paramount, July and August are the next two biggest months, according to owner Ken Gietz.
Gietz said business has been slow this year, but he does not attribute that to the Williamstown Theatre Festival's altered schedule. Rather, there are bigger forces at play.
"We started to see the trend in March, and it was basically over the economy and the news people were getting," Gietz said. "It's the same thing during the summer. Nothing drastic, but, for sure we have seen a decline.
"People are just doing a little bit of belt-tightening right now because they're unsure what direction we're heading. There has been so much reporting on the potential of a recession that people are drawing back on what they're spending. Nothing major, that's for sure. It's not like the big recession we had in 2008 and 2009, but they are drawing back just a little bit right now."
Even in places where the revenue dip is more specific to the summer, it can be hard to nail down just one cause. Rainy weekends in June and July did not help matters. Neither did the fact that some of those tourists from New York City and Boston who vacationed closer to home in 2021 and '22 may be branching out in 2023.
"Last year, what filled us up was people got up in the morning and wanted to get out of the city or New Jersey, all the way to Philadelphia, but they didn't want to fly," Malhotra said. "That was a big factor."
"I read an article last week talking about how much domestic air travel is down but international travel is up," said David Little, owner of Spring Street's Spoon. "Maybe people, finally, post-COVID, are discovering they want to travel abroad."
Little knows about COVID. He opened his frozen yogurt and sorbetto cafe in July 2020.
Even with that relatively short history on Spring Street, he can say the first months that he did not see a growth in business were June and July 2023.
"I think the shortened theater festival didn't bring as many people to town, and there was rising inflation, especially in the restaurant industry, and the weather hasn't helped," Little said. "I'm in a weather-sensitive business. Maybe it's a whole bunch of factors, but I've talked to hotel owners, other restaurant owners and everyone seems to be down numbers wise."
One tangible impact at Spoon: In summers past, Little has expanded the 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. hours of operation by one hour because the shop had a line out the door at 9. This is the first year he has continued closing at 9.
Of course, unlike rainy weekends, the reduced theater schedule came with a warning. The WTF generally announces its summer season in the winter, and businesses had some time to prepare for a potential drop in demand.
Visitors stream into the Clark Art Institute late Thursday morning.
Instead, a business that had been trending up each month since it opened three years ago saw a drop of about 5 to 10 percent in June and July, Little said.
But he remains optimistic.
"I'm not frightened by a couple of months," Little said. "I look at it as us having to cut down on labor costs a little bit and extend our marketing. … The [Williams College] students are starting to come back, and my numbers are already starting to come up. Not as much as I'd hoped, but at least they're going in a positive direction. That will only get better as more students come back to campus.
"It's just been an odd summer — one I could not have predicted."
Tags: tourism, WTF,
