Nearly two months after Hurricane Beryl left more than 120,000 homes in Galveston County without power, leaders from the city’s business and tourism industries met Monday to craft a common message that would keep citizens safe while ensuring businesses retain their customers.
The Galveston Island Tourism Crisis Communications Roundtable began this week with members of the City of Galveston, Galveston Regional Chamber of Commerce, Visit Galveston, Galveston Hotel & Lodging Association and Galveston Restaurant Association to begin a discussion after Beryl met with local businesses during the busiest month of the year.
“It’s really all about communication, before the storm and right after the storm,” said Gina Spagnola, president of the chamber. “I think this is a good example of us all doing our thing but not communicating with each other.”
Spagnola was referring to conflicting reports about tourism that were circulating after Hurricane Beryl passed through.
These included a message from Mayor Craig Brown and one he spoke about on Monday.
Brown called a press conference for July 9, the day after the storm. By that time, 75 percent of the island was without power, debris blocked roads, people were worried about gas, and all beach access on the West End was badly damaged.
“My comment was that the city is not open for business right now,” Brown said Monday. “We need to assess the damage, get everything back to a position where we can receive visitors, and we will let you know.”
The following Sunday he sent an email asking visitors to come back.
“As you can imagine, I had to try to balance the needs of the business community with those of the residential community. Many residents sent me emails telling me they had no power or couldn’t get to their home,” Brown said.
Brown said he had coordinated with the parks administration before the press conference. Spagnola said the chamber, which represents more than 1,000 members, should have been contacted as well.
“What works really well is that when we’re all at the table, we’re part of the communications plan because we had a press release,” Spagnola said. “Their chamber was busy putting together a resource guide that put everything together in one place at once, so no one had to worry about, ‘What do I do? Where’s the power? What’s going on?'”
The 10-member group unanimously elected Spagnola as chair and agreed to reduce the core of the group by half to form a steering committee.
“Then the steering committee would come together to determine all the discussion points about directing people to a website,” said Kimberly Danesi, CEO of the parks department. “Maybe in two years a website isn’t the right way to go – with technology, we never know. Maybe it’s a social media page.”
Other items on the group’s agenda included discussion of activation protocols and management of message distribution.
