Salem Ready To Welcome Back Tourists One Year Into Pandemic

SALEM, MA —"Hope to see you next year" has finally turned into "Hope to see you soon" in Salem.

A year after businesses closed, harsh restrictions were imposed and Halloween was effectively canceled in the holiday's unofficial hometown, Salem is once again actively inviting tourism to eat at its restaurants, visit its attractions and look forward to coming back next Halloween season as the coronavirus crisis hopefully wanes.

"They're already coming," Kate Fox, director of Destination Salem, told Patch Friday morning. "So we need to be ready and welcoming because visitors are coming. Vaccination numbers are going up and the weather is getting nice. People are planning to come out.

"We are getting calls every day from people who are planning to come back in October excited about Haunted Happenings."

While Fox said the city will strictly adhere to all current state guidelines on performance protocols, capacity restrictions and social distancing and mask enforcement, Destination Salem is at the point where she feels comfortable telling people it's OK to return to allowable tourist activities with an eye to planning events in the fall that may not be allowable under current state guidelines, but hopefully will be in the coming months.

"It's a lot of cautious optimism," Fox said. "We're just really excited to get back to work and the work we're charged with — to promote and market visitation to Salem.

"We're not looking back. We're looking forward. We think it's going to be a really good year. I think there will be a lot of locals taking day trips to a city that is known as a great cultural center. Those people will be going out to dinner at our restaurants. As people feel more and more comfortable being in public and being around other people, it's going to be great for Salem."

The city plans to promote April 1 as its "Opening Day" with a marketing campaign to coincide with many seasonal tourist attractions reopening and restaurants increasingly resuming outdoor dining.

Salem will also promote the Salem Arts Festival June 4 through 6, Salem Ancestory Days April 30 through May 3 and the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem May 13 through 16.

"Some of the events will be a combination of in-person and virtual," Fox said. "We are slowly seeing the transition from events all online to being in person again."

The journey from last spring's shutdown to this spring's rebirth has come with a lot of anxiety and stress, but also a lot of learning in Salem.

Last summer, the city took on the "European feel" with dozens of restaurants offering outdoor dining for the first time in a safe and enjoyable way that that the city hopes to reenact this year and for the foreseeable future as part of a new dining destination identity.

In the fall, officials were in the previously unimaginable position of telling tourists not to come to Salem for Halloween because of coronavirus crowd fears, followed by a holiday season and winter where cases surged across the state and the city promoted takeout dining and curbside delivery of sales over in-person, indoor activity whenever possible.

Fox pointed to the two-week "Salem So Sweet" event in February that brought out limited crowds in a socially distanced way as the first major step forward toward envisioning how a "reopening" can be done while the pandemic lingers.

"We just have so much more experience with it now," Fox said. "We were really moving fast last year and adjusting to an everchanging environment. We had one set of guidelines and then something new would come out and he had to change it. Now we know more what to expect no matter what happens."

Fox said that while visitors are once again welcomed, they are not welcomed to do anything they please.

"We still have all of our guidelines about masks and capacity limits," she said. "We are focusing on education that just because your hometown may be open doesn't mean you don't have to follow the guidelines here and wear a mask in public. Even if you are vaccinated, you still have to follow our guidelines if you come here.

"Most people understand that and are just happy to be out again. It's the small number of travelers who don't that make it difficult for everyone."

With street fairs still prohibited and indoor events still highly restricted, preliminary planning to promote those events is being done in the case they are allowed by the fall.

"We will be ready to go as soon as the guidelines change," Fox said.

In the meantime, Fox said it is refreshing to transition from months of telling people — to varying degrees — to stay away from the city, to now be actively inviting them back.

"We are looking forward to April 1 when we throw open the doors," she said.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)