Craig Fuller expected to bring 2,000 people to Chattanooga in November for a national logistics convention, but scrapped that plan last week as he watched COVID-19 trends worsen.
"It just wasn't worth the risk, frankly," said Fuller, the founder and CEO of FreightWaves. "I don't want that on my conscience."
But while some events that had been planned for the fall are falling off calendars, other major events - particularly those hosted outdoors - are holding steady, said Barry White, CEO of the Chattanooga Tourism Co.
"Ironman, the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival, Moon River this weekend, Nightfall, there are lots of things going on that are still happening," he said. "We're still having Saturday markets. I think the outdoors just provides a lot more flexibility."
Although conventions and banquets are returning to the Chattanooga Trade Center this fall after last year's shutdown, bookings are less than a third of what they were two years ago, and many events have recently been scrapped, said Mike Shuford, the center's executive director.
"Last year, we were dead empty at this time of the year, but we're probably still only 25 to 30% of what we were booking two years ago," Shuford said. "Even when the events are held, we're seeing much smaller crowds."
Bookings were rising until three weeks ago, when the jump in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations caused many meeting planners to rethink their fall conferences, he said.
"We're crossing our fingers and praying that the numbers (of COVID infections) start to go down again, but it's hard to predict what is going to happen," Shuford said.
Fuller has been studying the trends in infections and hospitalizations, and he doesn't see much good news on the horizon, he said.
"I don't have any data that suggests this is going to get better," he said.
F3: The Future of Freight Festival will be virtual instead, and FreightWaves has plenty of experience in producing high-quality online events that attract far more people than could attend in person, Fuller said.
But it's still disappointing, he added.
"We had $3 million in booked revenue," he said. "It would have been really profitable, and we had really good early participation."
The conference, which Freightwaves has previously hosted in Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas, was also going to send thousands of people into local hotel rooms, meeting spaces and tourist attractions, Fuller added.
"We had 30-odd sites we had identified and had contracted with half a dozen," he said.
FreightWaves leadership discussed possible strategies for hosting the events including requiring masks, and even requiring vaccines, but ultimately the risk of spreading COVID-19 and worsening an already dire situation couldn't be justified, Fuller said.
"The thought of getting 1,000 or 2,000 people together would be pretty scary," he said. "I honestly don't know when it's going to get better."
Leisure travel and events have held up relatively well in the Chattanooga area, but business travel and events have been slower to return, and the latest wave of COVID-19 won't help that, White said.
"Obviously, leisure travel has slowed down since kids have gone back to school, and we're definitely seeing a slowdown or evening off of business-related travel that may have been coming back," White said. 'That's probably going to lag even farther throughout the rest of the year and into the first of the year."
In response to the rising number of COVID cases, Foundation House Ministries canceled an event scheduled to attract up to 3,000 people in November, and smaller events planned by the Rotary Club and Bible in the Schools were also recently scrapped, Shuford said.
"We were looking great for business this fall and all of a sudden the delta variant hit us, and we started dropping again," he said.
The Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, the Tennessee Kentucky Water Conference and the Tennessee Credit Union League all held major gatherings last month at the trade center and the Tennessee Realtors and the Tennessee Municipal League are still scheduling conferences next week.
Contact Mary Fortune at mfortune@timesfreepress.com. Follow her on Twitter at @maryfortune.