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‘We are coming out of the tunnel’ | Area businesses prepare to welcome back tourists traveling for Memorial Day weekend

With tourists heading to the beach or the United States Naval Academy, the Eastern Shore is expected to be busy this Memorial Day weekend.

QUEEN ANNE'S COUNTY, Md. — After a long pandemic winter, many families want to head to the beach this Memorial Day weekend. This is great news for many of the local businesses that are ready to welcome customers back.

Queen Anne’s County Economic and Tourism Development office said they are already seeing some of the sales from area restaurants returning to levels similar to what they saw in 2019.

“Queen Anne’s County saw a significant increase in visitors looking for outdoor activities during the Spring/Summer 2020 Tourism Season as we have several nature parks, miles of trail system and public beach access at Matapeake Beach. Most of our visitors at that time were day trippers and as our restaurants and retail were closed except for carry out we did not realize much of an economic boost from the increase in visitors. Many of our restaurants and hotels saw drastic decreases in revenues in 2020 due to the pandemic but they were resilient and worked extremely hard to pivot operations to stay afloat,” said the Director of Economic & Tourism Development Heather Tinelli

Restaurants and businesses along the Eastern Shore were forced to pivot multiple times during the pandemic to stay afloat.

The Narrows Restaurant has served families in the area for more than 35 years.

“We’ve been here a long time and we have deep roots. We adjusted as we had to in the ways that were best for our business. It’s been a roller coaster ride, like nothing we’ve ever seen in our whole experience,” said owner Kelly Phipps.

With tourists heading to the beach or the United States Naval Academy, Phipps said she she’s loved seeing the town come back to life again.

“Ecstatic to be here and to be able to serve our customers and we look forward to it. We look forward to seeing everybody and the people that are happy to be out and come see us,” said Phipps.

“People are definitely re-joining society. They are happy to be out and about for sure. We have seen it increase in the last month really,” said Phipps.

If you are heading to want to Maryland beaches this weekend, Ocean City dropped it’s outdoor mask mandate on the boardwalk and other public areas just last month. Farther up the Eastern shore, Rehoboth Beach in Delaware followed suit on Friday, although only for those who are fully vaccinated.

The mask mandates depends on the county and state you visit so it’s a good idea to check those before booking your trip.

RELATED: Want to get to the beach this weekend? Here's what you should know

“I think everybody is roaring back to life in our area. We have a strong tourism business in this area, we are right on the path between the shore and the beaches and people are obviously flooding back to those areas,” said Phipps.

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