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Why do people come to Bend?

Tourism officials glean insights from extensive survey

By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin

Published: November 03. 2008 4:00AM PST

Knowing what Bend visitors want has never been easy, but the city’s tourism-promotion agency is gaining new insight from the most detailed research it has ever commissioned. The findings will help the agency better target its marketing and advertising.

RRC Associates, a Boulder, Colo.-based tourism research firm, completed a survey of 713 Bend visitors and found answers to myriad questions marketers have.

Among the questions: Who visits Bend? Why? And what are they going to do once they get here?

These are the questions that Visit Bend, which markets the city to visitors, can answer with the survey results, which will be analyzed and put into a final report that will be released in February, said Doug La Placa, president and CEO.

“The research is very interesting and valuable,” La Placa said. “We get a geographic picture of where our summer travelers are coming from and their primary motivations for visiting Bend.” It is the most extensive research that Bend’s tourism agency has ever done, La Placa said.

The raw data confirmed some suspicions.

The No. 1 reason people come to Bend: recreational possibilities, including hiking and trail running, water sports such as canoeing and kayaking, and cycling, La Placa said.

“The survey validated that our outdoor recreation assets are still the leading reason why people visit Bend, in addition to sightseeing, leisure and events,” La Placa said.

More of a surprise was the popularity of water sports accessible from Bend — 21 percent of respondents said their summer activities included rafting, kayaking or canoeing, according to the data.

“It was more than I expected,” he said.

Once they get here, tourists invariably want to visit downtown, according to the findings.

“It’s a reflection of how important a vibrant downtown is for the tourism industry,” La Placa said.

The largest percentage of Bend’s visitors are from the Portland area (29.2 percent) and elsewhere in Oregon (39.6 percent), but a growing number of visitors (16.8 percent) are from California, said La Placa, who said the research would help the agency market the city more effectively.

Tourism is estimated to have an economic impact of $571 million a year in Central Oregon.

Visit Bend has a budget of slightly more than $1 million for the fiscal year 2008-09 that began July 1, which includes $200,000 through corporate sponsorships and marketing partnerships, La Placa said. The rest of the budget is funded by the city of Bend using room taxes collected from guests staying in overnight accommodations.

“Without quality research, you have to draw assumptions about how you are allocating your marketing dollars,” La Placa said. “Those assumptions can be dangerous if they are wrong.”

The RRC research cost $14,000.

Once RRC’s final report is completed this winter, Visit Bend will use it for marketing purposes for summer 2009 to help it determine where to advertise, La Placa said.

Visit Bend also could partner with Mt. Bachelor ski area, which already works with RRC, to complete a winter survey of visitors, La Placa said.

Mt. Bachelor works with RRC every other year, said Alex Kaufman, the ski area’s marketing director. The RRC data is highly respected within the ski industry and helps Mt. Bachelor in every aspect of its operations, he said.

“One of the benefits is that it allows us to compare ourselves with the rest of the industry and see how we are doing,” Kaufman said. “We can see where we fall against the industry based on the aggregate of our guests’ opinions.”

Jeff McDonald can be reached at 541-383-0323 or at jmcdonald@bendbulletin.com.

This article has been corrected. Read correction.

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