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Vaccine mandates could have 'tremendous upside' on hospitality sector: American Nightlife Assoc. President

J.C. Diaz, American Nightlife Association President joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss what nightclubs are doing to keep customers safe while fighting the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Welcome back. In a first of its kind move here in the US, New York City is going to be the first city to require proof of vaccination for a mix of activities, including gyms and eating indoors, as Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that this morning. It's an interesting shift away from what we've seen in other cities turn to, including LA, San Francisco, and the like getting back to mask mandates.

And it's interesting for the companies that now have to deal with these things as well, including nightclubs, which have seen, obviously, a big impact during the pandemic. And for more on that, I want to bring on JC Diaz, American Nightlife Association President. And, JC, I remember chatting with you earlier on in the pandemic, we were talking about how hard this was when lockdowns were in place.

But now coming out on the other side, there are some people who might say, this could be a net positive because, you know, it's safer, and you might have people all right with getting back into nightclubs. But what are you seeing as maybe the impact if we are expecting to see vaccinations required in some of these businesses?

JC DIAZ: Well, we can't pretend that we will, obviously, overcome the virus. A lot of the data that's showing is due to increasing exponential rate of infections. I have been going outside. I have been to Long Beach, I've been to San Diego, LA, and most recently in Vegas. So clubs are operating at full capacity again. The mitigation measures are still in effect.

As of Thursday night at midnight, the mask mandate was back in effect not only in Las Vegas, but here in LA as well. And so we are trying to come back. And our whole goal is really to help rebuild, revitalize, and restart the nightlife sector with responsible operators, even though we were going through some current challenges with the Delta variant taking effect.

AKIKO FUJITA: JC, what does it ultimately mean, though, for business? I mean, do you anticipate that potentially something like a vaccine mandate could actually bring more people back, now that they feel comfortable people have been vaccinated? What's the calculation on the impact these mandates are likely to have?

JC DIAZ: I mean, it can have a tremendous upside, really, especially in the hospitality sector. I mean, we see it more in the travel area where you have to get tested before you arrive to the resort. If not, you'll get held for a couple of weeks. But it has had a tremendous impact-- positively, obviously-- where it is encouraging people to travel more, spend money, and go out. And obviously, that's what the nightlife sector is all about.

And people are tired of being cooped up in their homes. They want to have fun. They want to see their friends. They want to see their family. And all the industries that are involved part of the nightlife industry are seeing a huge comeback. And so we want to try to prolong that as much as possible because people-- it's from the employment side, obviously, but it's also from the people that want to go out and have some fun.

ZACK GUZMAN: And as we talked about, I mean, obviously, you can't weather these impacts, downturns in revenue for that long. I mean, when you talk to clubs around the country here, what kind of impacts are you seeing, relative to what we saw pre-pandemic, as the Delta variant came back up-- curious if that's kind of impacted things yet again.

JC DIAZ: Yeah, I mean, obviously, we've seen a lot of businesses shut their doors. And the people that are still remaining, whether they're waiting for the Shuttered Venue Operators grants, they're trying to stay as long as they can. But it is having a huge impact. Just in New York City alone, about 110,000 establishments shuttered their doors. That also includes 2.5 million jobs that were lost.

So now that the economy seems to be opening back up, seems to be trying to function normally, obviously, there's a huge hiring going on like anywhere from the security side, to servers, to cooks. So we're trying to kind of keep that going as much as possible. And definitely, they use a lot of different technologies that are out there, including like UVC filtration systems, touchless point of sales.

We've seen a lot more of that lately. But you're seeing a lot of businesses pivot to the food and beverage area, including a delivery with alcohol to go. So there's a lot of opportunities that do exist, including live-streaming and brand merchandise, that are helping some of these venues stay alive. But the Delta variant that we're hoping that if everybody kind of gets vaccinated-- obviously, some people are requiring cards-- as long as they're not fake, because we know we've seen that happen over in Lollapalooza-- as long as most people are becoming vaccinated, then we can try to kind of keep this virus at bay.

AKIKO FUJITA: JC, bottom line here-- what's more effective you think, vaccine mandates or mask mandates? If the goal here is to bring back business, what's going to help more?

JC DIAZ: Well, the mitigation measures have worked tremendously, right? The mask mandates is, like, the first line of defense. Definitely having the antigens and the vaccine passports could have a tremendous impact for a lot of different people, because, more importantly, look, if I'm vaccinated, right, but there's someone that's not, I don't know if they're going to be careless or not and going to basically be contagious to other people in the venue.

And more people are looking to go out and have fun, but they want to make sure that they're safe, including staff. And as you see it-- I know I've seen it in Vegas and then all these other cities that I traveled to-- the staff are frequently wearing masks. And I think that's had a huge impact to where people are not being, basically, contaminated with the virus or not being contaminated with other different things that exist out there.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, pity the bouncers-- not only got to police the line, you got to police fake IDs, now fake vaccination cards-- all these things on top of it. But, JC Diaz, American Nightlife Association President, appreciate you coming on here again with us today. Be well.

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