Travel Industry Hurt by COVID-19

Nebraska’s tourism industry has been negatively impacted by COVID-19.

Organizers have cancelled large events like the College World Series and the US Olympic Swim Trials. Hotels have started to temporarily close as people curtail travel under COVID-19 restrictions.

John Ricks is executive director of Nebraska Tourism, called tourism a strong industry that will recover from the impacts of COVID-19.

“There’s a lot of pent up demand out there right now. There’s a lot of, people are kind of cooped up,” Ricks said. “And we know that there’s pent-up demand, for example, because we announced our passport stops, and just with that announcement, an indicator we watch is our website traffic, just spiked for that day. So we know people are gonna travel again.”

Ricks added that the tourism industry dealt with disruptions last year during historic flooding in Nebraska.