Redmond Launches New Tourism Campaign

The City of Redmond launched a new tourism campaign last week in an effort to increase year-round visitation. The new campaign, Destination Redmond, promotes Redmond as “Oregon’s Basecamp,” giving visitors the opportunity to experience everything the region has to offer, due to its location in the heart of Central Oregon.

The first major part of this campaign is the Destination Redmond website, which launched last week, along with a paid ad campaign happening concurrently, according to Matt Watson, CEO of Watson Creative, the agency contracted to market tourism in Redmond.

As the campaign continues to move ahead, it will expand the Destination Redmond events section and its list of restaurants and activities around the city. It will also focus on more photo and video shoots to highlight what Redmond has to offer. The agency will then begin to measure visitor data given to them from the Redmond Municipal Airport, the Deschutes County Fairgrounds and some hotels to see how the campaign is tracking.

“All the work that we’re doing is very much inspired by and based upon data and a lot of the workshops and insights we gathered from the community at large,” Watson told the Source Weekly.

The City’s Tourism and Lodging Advisory Committee saw the need for a tourism campaign in Redmond and has been coordinating with Watson Creative over the last year, according to Tobias Colvin, current committee chair and director of SCP Hotel in downtown Redmond.

Watson Creative spoke to several stakeholders in the region, Colvin said, and the tourism committee played a big part in helping with branding and messaging to attract people to the area.

According to Colvin, this new tourism promotion is necessary for bringing people into Redmond, particularly during its off-season in the winter months.

“As a hotelier myself, we see that we’re really busy all summer. We have the fairgrounds, we’ve got great things happening in the region. So, our occupancy stays really high from June… pushing into October these days. But in the off-season, we need a little help,” Colvin told the Source Weekly.

The City of Redmond formerly contracted with the Redmond Chamber for its marketing services. However, in June 2024, the City decided to redirect tourism tax dollars to a new contracted agency, Watson Creative, to develop a more robust marketing effort.

According to Heather Cassaro, the City’s director of communications, the City of Redmond contracts with Watson Creative to provide services for its tourism marketing arm, Destination Redmond, which is managed by the Redmond Lodging and Tourism Advisory Committee.

The Chamber, which received about $350,000 in tourism tax dollars from the City before it terminated the contract, previously stated that the change in allocation created a gap in the services it can provide to visitors and community members.

Today, the Chamber no longer does any advertising or tourism promotion, according to Redmond Chamber Executive Director Eric Sande. The Chamber, which previously held a number of holiday events and operated as the Official Redmond Visitor Guide, will now hold events that are Chamber-focused and will continue to operate its Visitor Center, a local information center.

“We think it’s a vital service that needs to be provided, so we’re continuing to do that without funding. But our members depend on tourism, so we’ll continue to support our members and help them the best we can,” Sande said.

This article appears in Central Oregon Pets Spring 2025.