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Zac Ziegler: I'm Zac Ziegler, and you're listening to Oregon Rainmakers from KLCC. On this edition, I talk with Samara Phelps, the president and CEO of Travel Lane County.
Ziegler: Western Oregon is a pretty, beautiful place, and it's a varied beauty. You have the green and blue of the Willamette River Valley, the rugged and at times snowy Cascades, and the unique mix of jagged rocks and sandy dunes and beaches on the Oregon coast. I know that before I moved here, I traveled to Oregon several times to enjoy that beauty. And I'm definitely not alone. Tourism is big business in Lane County. To learn how big and what the major draws are, I made a trip over to the offices of Travel Lane County to speak with its president and CEO, Samara Phelps. She starts with that question of just how big tourism is here.
Samara Phelps: Tourism in Lane County is a $1.1 billion industry every year. Annually, a billion dollars comes in from someone outside of the community, a fully traded sector, to spend those dollars here in Lane County, which is really exciting. And often the fact that that is 1 billion with a B gets lost because it sounds awfully big, but it's true.
Ziegler: What is it that draws people here? What are those folks who are coming in, pouring in that $1.1 billion annually, doing?
Phelps: The things that people love about visiting here are the things that we love about living here. And that's a really kind of magic secret sauce to Eugene Cascades and Coast/Lane County as a destination. A billion dollars comes in with people wanting to experience our outdoors. They want to see our scenic beauty. They want to see waterfalls. They want to be able to hike and see dunes and lighthouses and put their feet in the Pacific, maybe, if they're bold enough. That's the primary draw. And then, as we know, visiting friends and relatives is huge. People who love living here love to show it off, and they invite people to come in. And then, of course, events, large-scale events like athletic events, track and field events, arts and culture events, the Country Fair out in Veneta. Those are the things that bring people in.
Ziegler: I know that's a bit of how I came to visit here. My cousin who lives here is always like, 'Oh, yeah, you should come up and visit.' And I'd come up and visit, a little more and a little more. And hey, about a year ago I found myself living here.
Phelps: That is the storyline we in tourism and in economic development often talk about. It starts with a visit. Our work at Travel Lane County is to inspire those visits. Thank you to your cousin for being a great ambassador and helping to inspire those visits. Because we really feel like this community does sell itself once you get here. Once you get here and you see how close it is to experience all those natural attractions, and then also the community that you get to experience them with, it does do that. It invites people to come and visit a little bit more.
Ziegler: So here we are in early May. We just had a really nice, even a little bit warm, weather this weekend. Is this, I'm guessing, then the time of year when we start seeing hotels filling up, Airbnbs getting booked, that kind of thing?
Phelps: Absolutely. The season for us is definitely a spring through early fall season. That is peak season. My work is a lot about talking about the winter season and helping to fill that trough, because we don't get as many visitors in winter. But here at the beginning of May, it's perfection. We had the marathon last weekend. We're headed into some amazing track and field events and gorgeous weather, and the Rhododendron Festival out in Florence at the coast. These are the things that start being iconic. People know they want to come and get out and experience the destination. That beautiful weather has inspired folks. We see them coming out in bigger numbers the nicer the weather gets. And then, of course, once school gets out and people have more flexibility to travel, we reach our peak. But we have some pretty, beautiful spring and fall visits as well.
Ziegler: We'll get to talk about some of those events, especially track, in a bit. But sticking on the weather: conditions around here have been getting warmer and drier over time. Is that impacting tourism in any particular way?
Phelps: Our partners out at Willamette Pass would definitely say it's impacted them this year.
Ziegler: I talked with them a few times this year. It wasn't a happy story too often.
Phelps: The change in weather patterns does impact what we offer and how we offer it. Obviously, the snowpack this season was a pretty big disappointment for anybody who wanted to get out on skis or snowshoes. So there's that kind of evolution happening. The other side of that is, I was visiting with an outfitter out of Oakridge, and they've been able to offer more and more early rides and spring shuttles for mountain biking, in partnership with the Forest Service, as we realize our seasons are starting to change. So we do see it changing how people travel, but it's also changing the product that we have to offer.
Ziegler: So thinking about the things that bring people here, maybe those bigger events. A lot of places have their signature events. Florida has spring training for Major League Baseball. New Mexico has the hot air balloon festival. Back in my hometown, it was things like the Tucson Festival of Books and the gem and mineral show that just meant you couldn't get a hotel room there in February at all. Does our area have events like that, the kind where Lord help you if you're trying to get a hotel room that weekend?
Phelps: Our community has the ability to host some pretty large events for a community of our size. We see a lot of that come out of track and field. Nowhere else in the world is home to track and field the way Eugene is. So Track Town, USA is a real thing. It's a real identity for us, and the world comes to see it because of that. We see it in droves. When we host a championship like the NCAA championships, or this year we're able to host the World Athletics Under 20 Championships, those are future Olympians coming from 168 different countries to come visit Eugene, Oregon. That's pretty incredible. It does max out town when we have those big events. So last weekend we had the marathon, which was an incredible experience. If you were around town, you saw a lot of folks with their running shoes on.
Ziegler: I tried to get down to downtown for the farmers market, and I was like, OK, I just gotta pick up some bread and honey, and, oh boy, it was an adventure.
Phelps: But that's how we share our community with others. It both brings them into our community and into connection with us. I always have such a great sense of pride when I'm at the farmers market during a big event weekend, out at restaurants on an event weekend, when you get to be next to folks who are visiting from Tucson or from New York state. We had a huge group of runners in from Mexico this marathon. That is bringing it into my hometown. I get to share it, and I also get the cultural exchange with it. So it's very exciting for us to be a community that is as approachable as ours is and be able to host those big events. We do have compression, though. When we have a big event in town, you will fill up the hotel rooms. What we really need now is to figure out how to fill up those hotel rooms in winter, so those are consistent jobs for our friends and neighbors who work in tourism, and to build out that winter demand as we look at what the future of tourism looks like.
Ziegler: Is there a place that's like our biggest competition, where people look and they go, 'Do I go to Eugene, or do I go to Bend, or somewhere else like that?'
Phelps: For our community, we have diverse outdoor experiences and scenery. We are so lucky to live in a place that has the McKenzie and the Willamette rivers flowing through it. It's got trees, it's got hills, it's got dunes. We're really lucky to have that diversity. So I think we can compete with anyone in the Pacific Northwest. And we also compete with everyone in the Pacific Northwest for folks who want to have that experience: the deep green that is the Pacific Northwest, the easy access to the outdoors. We deliver it like nobody else. But we also have to make sure to tell people this is the place to do it, because a Bellingham or, to your comment, a Bend might have the reputation that draws folks in. So we're here to spread the word and make sure people know that they can get that and so much more here.
Ziegler: Is there something that is dragging down tourism, or something that we need to invest in to help bolster the industry?
Phelps: Yes. For the industry here in Lane County to really reach its potential and move out of the plateau we're in, we need to drive winter demand. Like we talked about, starting in the spring, we start to see the demand pick up. People want to come. They come for events. But we have a really significant trough in visitor spending that starts around December and runs through mid-March or so. That winter trough keeps us from having the businesses and jobs that are consistent year round. So we need to invest in what drives demand in those winter months. Travel Lane County, in partnership with Lane County, is exploring an indoor multiuse facility focused on sports, so we could be a regional sports hub during the winter. We're talking about court sports: eight basketball courts, 16 volleyball courts, to give you a picture of it. But that's really about flat floor space that could be used for cheer, wrestling, or any number of things. The research has really shown that there is demand for that. The key is, you've got to invest in it. You've got to build it. If you build it, we're pretty confident they will come, and they will come in the winter, which will help us have more capacity to support those jobs, to support the spending, and to make that a year-round consistent offering for our community. That's the work we're doing now: figuring out how this community can make that happen.
Ziegler: I think of when I was in high school, the AAU basketball tournaments I would play in, where we'd just be wall to wall basketball for a weekend and you'd see all these people flooding in. So I'm guessing that's kind of the hope, that something like that could help.
Phelps: Absolutely. And the beauty of it is, for many of your listeners who have someone in their life who is a youth athlete or a club sport participant, they are traveling. Our families are traveling, and everywhere they're traveling to is further away than a facility that we could build here in Eugene-Springfield. So it would definitely provide that home court advantage and bring those teams in to play here in Lane County. But it would also provide that same court that can be a tournament venue on a Saturday and Sunday, filling hotel rooms and generating visitor spending during the winter. Then on a Tuesday night it's a place to practice, play, and for our community to gather. So the infrastructure investment in a regional tourism facility that drives those winter overnight stays is also a quality-of-life investment for our community.
Ziegler: You mentioned that this is kind of an outdoorsy place when it comes to tourism. Is there a way to capitalize on that in the winter? Would it be improving our ski infrastructure, maybe making snowpack more reliable at Willamette Pass through manmade snow? Is there anything like that that could help draw people?
Phelps: Right now, what we really want to lean into from the outdoor recreation standpoint, in terms of winter seasonality, is to look at the things we can do in the winter. And let's be honest: with a good rain jacket, nearly all of our outdoors is available to us year round.
Ziegler: Yeah, you don't mind getting a little muddy. A jacket because it's most of the time just that little spittle rain.
Phelps: Exactly. So good wardrobe choices, and our outdoors is pretty accessible year round. Travel Lane County is sharing that message through our marketing and our storytelling, to show how accessible the outdoors is during the winter months. Things like hot springs are really popular, because we can tie that with a walk or a bike ride. That could be anything from a 60-mile bike ride or a six-mile bike ride, and then you can get into the hot springs. Those are the ways we can leverage our outdoor recreation for a year-round attraction. And then, of course, we have the coast, with storm watching, Whale Watch Week, those kinds of things that really say: don't stop coming just because the calendar changes. Because for a lot of the country, if you're from Wisconsin, coming here in February is almost tropical. We're not quite tropical, but we're accessible.
Ziegler: Still gonna be a lot warmer.
Phelps: You're not going to have to shovel snow, and you could see a performance and get your jog in on Pre's Trail or a hike on Ridgeline, and it would be a great experience.
Ziegler: We talked a bit about a big infrastructure project. How do you ensure, especially right now when government money is pretty tight, that a project like that doesn't just become a boondoggle? I think of back where I'm from, there was all this effort put into building a really nice spring training baseball stadium, and by the time they got it all done, the teams had decided they were moving north to Phoenix. There was just this stadium sitting on the edge of town vacant for much of the year. Even still, more than 20 years later, they're trying to find uses for it. How do you ensure that when you pump money into something to try and build tourism, it doesn't just end up being that kind of regret?
Phelps: We want a sustainable project, just like anyone else does. You don't go in looking for it to be a boondoggle. And we're putting in place the research, the study and the mechanisms to do just that: a sustainable project that serves the visitor economy as well as the residents themselves. A couple of things. One, we have done extensive market research over the last several years, and the data continues to show demand. Youth sport, especially amateur and participatory sport, tends to be really resilient, because people want that activity in their lives even when markets fluctuate. So it's a great way to invest in a market that has been resilient and consistent. It is also an investment in our community, because we know we need the space for community uses as well, not just for bringing people in from outside. And then we have the transient lodging tax, which is paid by visitors when they stay in overnight lodging here in the county. So transient lodging tax is a funding source paid by the visitor, not the resident, but we can get that resident benefit out of it as well. Using that helps it feed itself, helps us keep that cycle going, so we can put money back into the economy. The estimates are around $20 million of additional visitor spending that could come from a facility like this. And you get those Tuesday and Wednesday nights for local kids to play.
Ziegler: Excellent. Well, thanks for taking some time out of your day to sit down and chat with me.
Phelps: Thanks for the invitation. We're so excited to be able to talk about what the visitor economy does. Because, like you said, sometimes that person from Chicago standing next to you doesn't look like a visitor. They just look like somebody else who's really into track and field.
Ziegler: That was Samara Phelps, the president and CEO of Travel Lane County. This has been Oregon Rainmakers from KLCC. I'm Zac Ziegler. Thanks for listening.
