Business Owners optimistic for Boston Marathon Route for October Race

The Boston Marathon is big business for the eight cities and towns it runs through. The economic impact is believed to be more than $200 million.

The absence of the Marathon on Patriot’s Day for two years in a row has had a ripple effect financially.

Often compared to Christmas, the marathon provides businesses with a way to recover their profits, so much so that some owners claim that businesses have been built around the days leading to the marathon. But with the pandemic in tow, businesses in the area have been deprived of their major sales on Marathon days.

When the marathon moved to a virtual platform in 2020, many business owners were forced to look for other alternatives to their businesses. Some looked to sell their goods online and created websites for their businesses, while others looked to local businesses for tie-ups.

Well, with the Marathon back in business this year, there is a hopeful air around Boston. According to the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, spectators and visitors at the marathon and marathon-related events spent a total of $32.2 million in 2017.

Business owners along the route sound cautiously optimistic for their return this fall.

“I think everyone sort of putting aside the fact we were losing sales,” said a business owner, “We were just losing that sense of community, I think that was a big hit for us.”

“Our Christmas is the Boston Marathon,” Dan Fitzgerald, co-founder of the Heartbreak Hill Running Company, told WBZ-TV. “It’s another struggle like a marathon,” said Fitzgerald. “We were kind of able to fight through and get here, and we’re excited to see the real thing back.”

“That energizes the business really from December through April,” said Fitzgerald. “It peaks through the race when people flood into the city, and they want to have a piece of Heartbreak, or a piece of the Boston Marathon to take home.”