PORT ANGELES — The impacts of a healthy hospitality industry are more far-reaching than the immediate sights, sounds and adventures that visitors experience, the head of Oregon’s statewide tourism agency said Thursday.
The lesson for the North Olympic Peninsula’s tourism sector: Oregon visitors who buy products there look for Oregon-made items after they return home and keep purchasing them, Travel Oregon CEO Todd Davidson said.
Davidson was the keynote speaker on the first day of the two-day Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission’s 2017 Tourism Summit at the Vern Burton Community Center in Port Angeles, which ends today.
The summit is sponsored by the Tourism Commission, the city of Port Angeles and the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce.
As a ripple effect, the gifts that Oregon visitors give family and friends spur those recipients to buy goods made in the Beaver State, Davidson told about 150 summit attendees.
“They return home, and the product has become a promotion,” Davidson said, highlighting Oregon cheeses, craft beers, wines and manufactured goods.
“The impacts are so much more far-reaching than if you are just talking about direct economic impact,” he said in a later interview.
In a behavior survey of visitors, 31 percent said they purchased Oregon products several times after they returned home, and more than 65 percent said they did so a few times, he added.
“They were more likely or much more likely to purchase Oregon products when they return home,” Davidson said.
That includes buying products online or, for example, joining a wine club “so they can continue to relive that experience,” he said in the interview.
“We also have a role in expanding markets for these agricultural goods, these culinary layers.”
In addition, a behavior survey of visitors showed that business owners who consider relocating to Oregon are often inspired by visiting the state.
In that same survey, just 1.4 percent of visitors to Oregon said they were dissatisfied with their trip.
Davidson said the top reason was traffic.
Second was weather.
“We are kindred spirits in that,” Davidson quipped to the audience.
The third reason?
“[The visit] was too short,” Davidson recalled. “I really like that.
“If someone is dissatisfied with me because they did not spend more time with me, that would be a compliment, right?”
Throughout Davidson’s more than hourlong presentation, he stressed the importance of collaboration in the tourism industry.
“The biggest point I can make to you around the importance of cooperation is simply, what you do matters, and the whole is truly bigger than the sum of its parts,” he said.
“It can’t be about our egos. It has to be about what’s right.”
The Oregon tourism industry generated $11.3 billion in direct spending in 2016 and employed 109,000 workers, according to Travel Oregon.
Washington state’s tourism industry generated $20.7 billion in direct visitor spending in 2015, according to a Dean Runyan Associates study for the Washington Tourism Alliance, a nonprofit organization.
The Oregon Tourism Commission does business as Travel Oregon, a semi-independent agency created by the state Legislature in 2003 funded by a 1.8 percent statewide lodging tax.
In 2011, the Washington state Legislature made Washington the only state in the U.S. without a statewide tourism office and no state money to promote itself to travelers — at a time when tourism was the state’s fourth largest industry, according to The New York Times.
“There is still power in the business community coming together” to attract visitors, Davidson said later.
“There’s so much more impact if we can bring greater alignment all through that buying chain.
“We are pleased to be here today [Thursday] and to see the level of cooperation that already exists and the foundation they are looking to build on.”
The tourism summit workshops today can be attended for a $99 registration fee payable at the Vern Burton Community Center, 308 E. Fourth St. For more information and a schedule, see www.chambersignups.com.
“[Davidson] teed it up for a lot of things we will be talking about in the next day and a half,” Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau Executive Director Marsha Massey said after his presentation.
“His main message was really about the importance of collaboration at all levels.”
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@ peninsuladailynews.com.
