NEW ORLEANS — Some businesses are preparing to reopen at a smaller capacity in a couple of days, but that has one type of business in the tourism industry wondering how it can survive.
Some Southeast Louisiana tour guide companies have concerns about the future.
Isabelle Cossart came to New Orleans from France when she was 21 years old, and she has been showing off the gumbo mixture of New Orleans culture, landscape and wildlife to the world for 41 years with her tour company.
"I love New Orleans, and I want to share it with people," Cossart said. "How cool is it to earn a living for that many years doing something you love and sharing my passion for New Orleans with guests."
But with airplanes and hotels empty, the tens of thousands of tourists from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America who used Cossart's company, Tours by Isabelle, are not coming.
So the plantations, swamps and airboats, French Quarter and buses sit empty, her 22 employees laid off.
"Reorganizing the debt is taking a long time," Cossart said. "That is about all I’m doing in my big empty office now. I’m tired of counting my debt. I want to count tourists."
Cossart had to reinvent her business for a while after Hurricane Katrina. Now, she said she’ll try to do it again, marketing and giving discounts to small local and private groups, or families who might drive in from surrounding states.
But there’s a problem.
How do you social distance on the tour bus? How do you pay bills at 25% capacity? And how do you get employees who are getting unemployment checks that are temporarily more than their pay?
Now, after all these years, she's scared of losing the business she built and her livelihood, but Cossart has hope.
While most people who cancelled got a refund, some of those international would-be travelers just asked for a voucher, saying they really want to come to see the ‘Sportsman's Paradise’ one day.
"Airboat tours, they love to see the alligators, and we go in a small airboat," Cossart said. "I have pontoon boat rides with a wonderful cajun trapper alligator hunter by trade, and people love his accent."
Now, Cossart is hoping she won’t have to declare bankruptcy, so she can share the passion she has for New Orleans with tourists again.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.
