Businesses brace for impacts to profits because of coronavirus

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Coronavirus is bad for business.

In addition to encouraging students to stay home and complete their classwork online, a pre-emptive strike by the NCAA has shut down college baseball and what many expect would have been the first two rounds of the women’s NCAA basketball tournament.

Those games would have brought in fans and money.

The owner of The Lodge, a Mississippi State Bulldogs super fan store, John Hendricks said the cancellation of the upcoming sporting events, is going to make business for him much harder.

“It won’t help us since we specialize in supporting the university with everything for all the teams,” said Hendricks. “Sports teams and the fans and if the fans can’t come to the games we don’t have much potential sales.”

Hendricks said this entire week has been interesting.

He said he never thought the coronavirus would have this much of an impact.

“We’ve never faced anything quite like this before,” said Hendricks. “So we’re trying to figure it out as we go. Every time we come out the cancellations get a little worse each day so we are just going to roll with the punches so to speak and see what we can do.”

Hotels are also feeling the effects of the coronavirus.

Jordan Gillentine, general manager of the La Quinta Inn and Suites, said this time of the year business was usually booming.

But that wasn’t the case this time around.

“Everyone was excited as always to come in and support the team,” said Gillentine. “This is several years straight that we have made this a tradition of the host region, the regional. I know a lot of people are disappointed. But the most important thing is that the measures are being taken to keep people safe.”

Gillentine said hotel workers have also been trained to make sure each room is properly cleaned at all times.

“From the corporate side of things,” said Gillentine, “the brand actually passes down some best practices on how to ensure we are disinfecting properly and taking extra measures necessary to ensure that all of our rooms are sanitary and that things are done in the proper order to make sure that nothing is left behind in the case that a guest who has been here may have come in contact with the coronavirus.”

There are zero diagnosed cases in Starkville and on the Mississippi State campus.