Clay Gregory was at home in Napa on the night of Oct. 8 when he noticed the smell. The wind had kicked up during the day, and when Gregory, president and CEO of Visit Napa Valley, ventured outside, "it was all smoke and one big ball of orange fire."
That mass of flames was the Atlas Fire, which burned more than 51,000 acres in the western hills above Napa and destroyed 481 structures before it was fully contained. For a week and a half, the images coming out of Northern California were horrific: homes leveled, vines ablaze, residents mourning lost neighbors and neighborhoods.
Wine country is hardly the only destination that experienced a crisis in 2017. Hurricane Maria rocked the Caribbean, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Hurricane Harvey dumped 51 inches of rain on Houston, turning the country's fourth-largest city into a swamp. Hurricane Irma blasted Florida with maximum wind speeds reaching 185 mph. A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook Mexico City. And in Big Sur, winter rains liquefied fire-stripped hills, causing massive landslides and a major bridge closure.
Not all disasters were due to extreme weather systems or tectonic realignment. Britain has endured a series of terrorist attacks in 2017, while in Las Vegas, concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival had to flee for their lives after a gunman opened fire, killing 58 and injuring some 500.
Whether destinations are dealing with natural fury or human rage, tourism recovery after a crisis varies significantly from destination to destination and situation to situation. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has estimated that tourism numbers return to levels before the crisis in an average of 13 months for terrorist attacks and almost 24 months for environmental disasters, but those figures can be shorter depending on the perceived safety of a destination or the amount of rebuilding and repair required.
In Las Vegas, prior to the Oct. 1 shooting, year-over-year visitation was slightly down in 2017, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). In the wake of the attack, visitation for October 2017 dropped 4.2% compared with the previous year.
"Conventions were up. The impact was really felt on the leisure side," said Kevin Bagger, executive director of the LVCVA's research department. In particular, visitors who might have driven to Las Vegas were more likely to have delayed their trip. "It's easier to cancel or postpone a drive trip versus an airline ticket," Bagger said.
Looking to 2018, Bagger said market research on consumer perceptions suggested that visitors who canceled or postponed a Vegas visit were doing so not because they feared a lingering threat but rather out of a sense of propriety, feeling it was too soon to cut loose in a place so recently wracked by tragedy.
"They indicated that they were postponing, but they were going to come back," Bagger said. "I think the impact of the shooting is a very near-term impact. It shouldn't be a long-term impact," he said.
In the Florida Keys, Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc on some islands and left others, including Key Largo and Key West, relatively unscathed. According to Andy Newman, media relations director for the Florida Keys & Key West Tourism Council, 70% of the total Keys-wide hotel room inventory is currently operational.
Without full hotel inventory available, Newman predicted that visitation will be down in 2018. Also, a number of rooms are being filled by FEMA personnel and recovery workers, who contribute to hotel revenues but don't book fishing charters or visit typical tourist attractions.
The same is true in Napa Valley and Sonoma County, where lodging statistics have been buoyed somewhat by the influx of relief workers and evacuees who have flooded hotels.
"This is our slower season of the year," said Claudia Vecchio, CEO of Sonoma County Tourism, "but when we look at year-over-year numbers they're pretty comparable. When you talk to hoteliers, their business is good, strong."
To entice meeting planners, Sonoma County is offering booking incentives as well as donations to fire relief efforts on behalf of booked groups.
In Napa, Gregory recalled the 2014 earthquake, which caused property damage and sent wine flowing out of shattered barrels.
"One of the things that helps a destination rebound is if it's well-known and has a place in people's hearts, and Napa Valley has both of those characteristics," he said.
Gregory estimated that it would take three to six months for wine country to rebound to pre-fire tourism levels, as visitors absorb the message that the region is open and operating largely as it always has.
In Big Sur, where landslides last winter blocked California's iconic Pacific Coast Highway, cutting off the region between the damaged Pfeiffer Canyon bridge and the massive Mud Creek slide, access is still a work in progress. The bridge reopened in October, so visitors traveling from San Francisco and points north and can now easily reach Big Sur landmarks like Nepenthe and Treebones, but Mud Creek isn't expected to be passable until late spring or early summer 2018, so travelers coming from Los Angeles are still cut off from the bulk of the destination.
Rob O'Keefe, chief marketing officer at the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he's heard about people putting off trips to the region because of road closures or confusion about what was open or closed.
"It's reasonable to think that we'll see a rebound in 2018, that people who were waiting to come might come now," O'Keefe said. "When that Mud Creek slide is cleared and overcome, we're going to turn that into a big celebration."
For all these recovering destinations, a key part of the 2018 strategy is communicating to potential visitors that they can come, that the experience these destinations are known for is still readily available, that there are new hotel openings and renovated conference centers and exciting developments worth the trip.
As the Florida Keys' Newman put it, "I will stand in the middle of the Overseas Highway and shout it out, that the typical Florida Keys vacation experience can be found."