Visit Bend, consultant present data-driven sustainable tourism findings; visitors support amenities but residents account for most regular use

Visit Bend and consulting firm Echo Northwest presented a data-driven review of tourism patterns in Bend during the Stewardship Subcommittee meeting, saying visitor spending supports amenities and jobs even as most regular use of parks and trails comes from residents.

The presentation, led by Jeff Knapp, chief executive officer of Visit Bend, and Mark Buckley, a partner at Echo Northwest, focused on visitation trends, the relationship between visitors and new residents, and strategies to manage congestion and resource impacts.

Knapp said Visit Bend has shifted its organization from “strictly [a] destination marketing organization to destination stewardship,” a change he described as putting “dollars back into the community… and showing up with human capacity and data.” He said the organization invested in the study to check its work and inform more sustainable outreach and grant programming.

Buckley, who described the analysis as an “honest assessment” using census data, park counts and cell-phone location data, explained economic measures used in…