PORT ANGELES — The Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission is pitching in $5,000 to become a founding member of a new statewide visitor group.
The state government’s Washington State Tourism office shuts down June 30 because of budget cuts, and as a “bridge organization,” the Port of Seattle along with tourism agencies around the state decided to form a private statewide group, Jane Kilburn, public affairs officer for the Port of Seattle, told about 70 people at Monday’s Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Diane Schostak, executive director of the tourism commission and its related Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau, said the commission, funded by 11 agencies on the North Olympic Peninsula, voted unanimously to join the state organization as a founding member.
The money will be taken from the commission’s general fund, which comes from the lodging tax revenues of all 11 partners, Schostak said.
“That money will come back to us,” she said.
“There was a $300 level of funding, but the $5,000 level was created because the industry said that we wanted to do more.”
The private Washington Tourism Alliance will market the state in much the same way as the ill-fated Washington State Tourism office.
Schostak said her office is also marketing the North Olympic Peninsula through magazine and newspaper articles in areas off the Peninsula.
“We measure how much those articles are worth based on how much buying that advertising space would have cost,” she said.
Russ Veenema, executive director of the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce, said he has calculated based on surveys that each person who stays overnight spends about $115 per day in town.
Because of that in 2010, tourism alone provided about $38 million to the economy in Port Angeles, he said.
“When you think about it we had about a 51 percent occupancy rate, and some of those folks get really involved in marketing and some of them don’t,” he said.
Schostak said requests for information for this year are pouring into her office.
“This is a big business for our area,” she said.
_________
Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
