While tourism in Oregon steadily increased for several years prior to the pandemic, travel bans and other restrictions wreaked havoc on the industry, slowing progress significantly in 2020. Since then, the state has been working to stabilize and continue to grow its tourism industry.
Visit Oregon, the agency promoting statewide tourism, released its most recent economic impact data last week, revealing that Oregon tourism has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. In 2023, travel industry employment recovered and both employee earnings and visitor spending rose significantly.
According to the 2023 report, visitor spending in the state reached an all-time high of $14 billion, a 0.6% increase from 2022. According to the data, the largest increase came from the food service industry, which earned $197 million.
This steady increase, according to the report, signifies industry stabilization compared to the rapid rise in spending between 2021 and 2022, as the tourism industry emerged from the pandemic.
Travel spending in the City of Bend increased 0.2%, from $382.2 million in 2022 to $383.4 million in 2023.
Central Oregon made up approximately 9% of all travel spending in the state. Within the region, Deschutes County generated about 86% of travel spending in the region, while Crook, Jefferson and a portion of Wasco counties accounted for the remaining 14%, according to the report. Bend generates 30% of all the direct travel spending in the region.
According to Nate Wyeth with Visit Bend, the city saw major visitor growth immediately following the pandemic. People flocked to Bend once travel bans were lifted, he said, causing a major increase in tourism, bringing the numbers up significantly compared to what normal growth would look like.
While the increase in visitor spending this year was somewhat small, it shows that the tourism within Bend is growing at about the same pace now as it was before the pandemic.
In 2023, industry earnings also grew significantly in the state and locally. The amount of money earned by employees and proprietors of the Oregon tourism industry grew to $4.5 billion — a 6.9% increase from 2022.
Direct travel-generated earnings in Bend increased to $117.8 million, a 16% change since 2022, according to Bend's economic impact data.
The total state and local tax revenue in 2023 grew 1.5% overall, resulting in $650 million, $10 million more than in 2022.
The state's lodging tax funds Oregon Tourism Commission programs, like Visit Oregon and Visit Bend. The state tax is currently 1.5% of the amount charged for occupancy of transient lodging.
Bend's transient room tax makes it so anyone staying in a Bend hotel, vacation rental or other short-term lodging pays a 10.4% visitor room tax to the City of Bend. Some 64.6% of the revenue generated by the tax goes to the City's General Fund, which pays for police, fire and roads. The remaining 35.4% is used for tourism promotion, going to Visit Bend.
According to the report, Bend generates 54% of the local tax revenue in the region. This is a result of a higher city-level transient occupancy tax rate compared to other cities in Central Oregon. The City of Redmond collects a 9% transient lodging tax and the City of Sisters collects an 8.99% tax.
Bend's employment sector also outpaces other cities in the region, generating 33% of direct travel-generated employment. Bend's tourism employment grew to 3,470 jobs since 2022, a 10.5% increase.
Employment in the state's travel industry as a whole recovered to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 with the creation of 2,180 new jobs, bringing the employment total back up to 118,500, a number not seen since before the pandemic.
"Those are the things that show we are moving in the right direction in the sense of restoring the workforce numbers to those pre-pandemic levels," said Wyeth.
The industry has seen a major jump in employment in recent years as jobs are reintroduced and refilled throughout the state.
The pandemic caused the loss of 25,000 travel and hospitality jobs across the state, according to a press release. "We have finally gotten to this place now where we have caught up to pre-pandemic staffing levels. We have surpassed now what 2019 looked like," said Wyeth.
While most of the industry has seen increases since the pandemic, Bend saw a decline in lodging this year. Lodging sales lowered to $140 million in 2023, a decrease of 3.1% compared to 2022.
This, Wyeth said, could be attributed to a national trend. Leisure travel in general has seen a softening over the past several months, he said. "In Bend, we're just a little more acute to some of those issues," he said. Things like weather-related issues can cause even a larger impact. According to Wyeth, things are still moving in the right direction.
