Cancelled fairs and festivals hit communities hard

https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2021/10/15/covid-19-canceled-many-fall-fairs-and-festivals-heres-what-that-means-for-wv-communities/

"Fall events represented the light at the end of the tunnel for communities that have struggled through a year and a half of the pandemic. The cancellations of many of them mark an extension of challenges created by COVID-19.
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The Forest Festival, which usually begins in late September or early October, is one of many fall events that have been canceled because of coronavirus concerns. Also among those affected is Bridge Day, West Virginia’s largest single-day festival, which includes watching BASE jumpers leap from the third-highest bridge in the United States; and the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival in Clarksburg, a three-day event that, like the Forest Festival, attracts more than 100,000 people in a typical year. 
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There was a lot of hard work and planning and finances and everything else that went into trying to pull off this festival, and it takes a good amount of work to unplan as much as it does to plan,” said Morris, who is also the executive director of the Randolph County Development Authority. “We still came to the same conclusion that for the overall health of the community, it would be best to cancel, but it definitely impacts a lot of people and a lot of businesses.”
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And it’s not just restaurants that would have benefited from the return of the Forest Festival. The county’s lodging businesses have also been suffering, which has a direct effect on government coffers. In 2019, Randolph County received $323,424 in taxes from hotels and motels. That dropped to $233,941 in 2020. As of the end of September 2021, the county had only collected $214,510."...(more)