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Chamber collecting economic impact for beach business

By Staff | Aug 1, 2018

The Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce is taking action to show elected officials the real-time situation on the beach.

In an email Wednesday, the chamber sent out a document for business owners to fill out and and record for the next few weeks.

The document asks five questions related to how the red tide and blue-green algae are affecting business:

Have you had cancellations as a result of poor water quality?

Have you had early departures as a result of poor water quality?

Have you seen a general year over year decrease in business?

What is the most frequent question you are getting?

How many people do you employ?

Fort the first three questions there are separate columns to document losses from the week of July 16 to the week of Aug. 27.

The chamber is asking businesses to send the updates for each week every Monday, starting Aug. 6.

“We will be tabulating weekly totals that will be reported to our representatives, town, county and state officials,” President Jacki Liszak said in the email.

She said the data will also be useful if local businesses need to file for disaster grants or loans.

Liszak said showing elected officials the “dollars and center, statistics and data” is the quickest way to grab their attention.

“We’ll never know how many animals have been killed. We need a dollar number to show them the amount of damage,” she said.

The chamber has been getting calls from visitors, asking if the water is safe; as well as resorts, hotels and vacation renters who are getting cancellations.

Some beach-front restaurants are closing; Junkanoo’s on the Beach was closed yesterday. The Salty Crab closed Wednesday afternoon and will be closed Thursday all day.

Besides the impacts, the Chamber has a water quality updates page for visitors, guests and businesses owners to check for the latest information. It’s also put up a business disaster assistance page to post information about potential disaster relief that may become available.