Travel Expenses

The Legislature said farewell to tourism marketing, so CAN private industry pick up the baton AND promote Washington effectively?

Bill Virgin | August 2011 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Through a lens hopefully: The Washington Tourism Alliance aims to attract visitors by unifying an industry whose entities don’t always like to hold hands.

Washington’s tourism industry has long lamented how little the state spends promoting its attractions and accommodations when compared to others.

“We used to say we were 53rd out of 50 states,” recalls Jane Kilburn, public affairs director for the Port of Seattle. “It was pitiful.”

So how much lower down in the rankings will Washington fall, now that the state has closed its tourism marketing office and cut the budget to zero?

That’s the question the newly formed Washington Tourism Alliance and the industry are trying to answer with state government now out of the travel-promotion business.

The tourism promotion office, which had been tucked into the Department of Commerce, fell victim to efforts by the governor and Legislature to close a $5 billion budget deficit, even though its contribution to that deficit—$1.8 million a year—was comparatively small.

The tourism industry appears resigned to the new reality. “We’re already down this path. The decision’s been made,” says George Schweitzer, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Spokane-based Red Lion Hotels.

“A statewide umbrella organization for tourism marketing is just really, really important,” says Tammy Blount, president and chief executive of the Tacoma Regional Convention & Visitor Bureau. “The farther away our customers are, the more important that umbrella becomes.”

For an example of what they don’t want to see happen, industry officials point to Colorado, which in the 1990s closed its state tourism-promotion office only to see tax revenue from that sector swoon. “Tourists don’t just show up at your door,” Schweitzer explains. “They’ve got choices.”

Tourism marketing is what puts a destination like Washington on that menu.

Schweitzer points out that Washington tourism generates $1 billion a year in tax revenue. “It’s not small potatoes,” he says. “There’s a lot to lose if we don’t do our best to continue to market this state.”

Those officials don’t need reports or data to remind them of what they’re up against. The state of Montana regularly advertises its tourism attractions on Seattle-area media, including radio, bus signs and billboards along freeways. Idaho paid for an insert in Spokane’s The Spokesman-Review to encourage travel to the state.

Well before Governor Chris Gregoire proposed eliminating state tourism marketing, Kilburn says, the industry had already begun talking about how to create “a more sustainable funding model.”

To further that effort, the industry in March convened its own summit at a SeaTac hotel to discuss a plan to form a new private-sector tourism-promotion entity called the