A Year After Hurricane Harvey, Houston’s Tourism Industry Is Shaken but Recovering

Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Houston just over a year ago, on Aug. 27. The accompanying flooding, which lasted through Sept. 3, caused an estimated $1.5 billion worth of damage to the city and forced thousands to be evacuated from their homes.

The city had a record 21.8 million tourists in 2017 up until Harvey hit — compared with 20 million in 2016 and 17.5 million in 2015 — but the number of visitors dropped in the few months after the storm landed. Twelve months later, how is Houston’s tourism industry faring?

Though the city is still suffering from the lasting effects of the storm, tourists are more likely to experience a city in the midst of recovery.

“If you visited Houston, you would see a city that looks similar to what it did pre-Harvey,” said Max Besbris, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University who has tracked post-Harvey recovery in the Houston area. “The storm affected various neighborhoods, and a lot of those areas have recovered, but there are still empty homes in poorer parts of town where people don’t have the money to rebuild.”

One indicator of a recovering tourism sector is lodging: roughly 98 percent of the city’s hotels — which number about 870 — stayed open following Harvey while the remaining 20 or so were damaged and had to close for renovations. Fewer than 10 of these properties are still closed, said Christian Abbate, a senior vice president at DPC Hospitality, a consulting firm that tracks the Texas hotel market; these include The Lancaster Hotel Houston, in the Theater District, and the Omni Houston Hotel, located in the Uptown neighborhood. All the properties affected by the storm are scheduled to reopen by this fall, Abbate said.

The majority of attractions, too, including the Houston Zoo, the Museum District and Space Center Houston, saw minimal or no damage from Harvey and quickly reopened after the hurricane hit.

However, the 17-block-long Theater District, which borders Buffalo Bayou, a 53-mile-long river that runs partly through the city, was heavily impacted, said Sheila Turkiewicz, vice president of the Theater District for Houston First Corp., which operates the city-owned theater venues. Harvey caused major flooding to the neighborhood, she said, and forced several theater companies to cancel, relocate or reschedule their performances.

The Wortham Theater Center, a major performing arts venue that is home to the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Ballet, was the most affected: the basement, which houses its rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms and one-third of the mechanical equipment that operates the theater, was flooded with 12 feet of water and rendered unusable.

The Wortham will reopen on Sept. 26, when the 2,400-seat Brown Theater, the larger of its two theaters (the 1,000-seat Cullen Theater is the other), will host a fundraiser for the Houston Grand Opera; tenor Plácido Domingo is scheduled to perform.

Turkiewicz said that restoring the Wortham will cost at least $100 million and that although both theaters will be open, repairs in the center’s basement will continue through May. “Despite the ongoing work, we have a packed season of performances through the summer,” she said.

Buffalo Bayou Park, a 160-acre green space located west of downtown Houston, is also working to get back to its former glory: The Bayou flooded the lower part of the park, inundating it with 4 to 5 feet of sediment, according to Anne Olson, president of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, a nonprofit that helps to preserve the park.

While 2,300 volunteers have spent more than 7,000 hours removing the sediment, repairing trail lights and replanting native plants and trees, five of the park’s footpaths have yet to reopen. “We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made, but the park is not yet to where it was before the storm,” Olson said.

The restaurant scene, on the other hand, is fully back and even ahead of what it was before Harvey, said Melissa Stewart, executive director of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association. The industry, which is comprised of around 12,500 restaurants, saw a 10 to 25 percent decrease in business in the three to four months after Harvey, she said; some restaurants were flooded or had other damage from the storm. As a result, several, including the beloved seafood spot Holley’s, were forced to close.

But as of August, the restaurant business had recovered, Stewart said, with some reporting an increase in diners. The city has also seen several openings after Harvey including a branch of the Japanese chain Nobu and one of the Mediterranean chain Fig & Olive.

In addition, some longtime Houston restaurateurs rebranded their existing concepts after the storm. Benjy Levit, for example, the owner of seven Houston restaurants, turned Benjy’s, an upscale farm-to-table spot, which was flooded with 5 inches of water, into The Classic, a casual and affordable spot that serves comfort food dishes like burgers and roast chicken.

"I took the damage I had from Harvey as an opportunity to come up with a new idea,” he said. The Classic opened at the end of July and has been packed daily ever since, according to Levit. “We have way more diners per day than we ever did in the nine years that Benjy’s was open,” he said.

Tourism to Houston overall, despite Harvey, is poised to grow this year. Official tourism numbers will not be released until late September, but, according to Innovata, a research company that tracks airline data, the Houston area is expected to see more than a 3 percent increase in scheduled air seats into William P. Hobby Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in 2018, compared with 2017.

“Houston can absolutely regain its normalcy,” said Lucy Arendt, a professor of business administration management at St. Norbert College, in De Pere, Wisconsin, and the author of the book “Long-Term Community Recovery from Natural Disasters.” “Following a significant storm like Harvey, however, that normal will be a new normal.”