Tourist and business people stopped coming to Portland in 2020. The city of Portland, at the Portland Business Alliance Breakfast Forum, Wednesday, billed as “Wish You Were Here! Rebuilding Portland’s Travel and Tourism Industry”, discussed Portland’s destination image. It was recognized that the city took a “major hit” because of “COVID-19, wildfires, political violence, and public safety.”
Jeff Miller, boss of Travel Portland, leads a team funded by a part of the 16.3% lodging tax, which takes the Portland zeitgeist and uses it to market to the city worldwide. Jim Etzel, CEO of Sport Oregon, the state’s sports economic development arm, which fills the gaps between teams, hotels and government bodies in trying to attract sporting events to the state was also a speaker at the event.
Travel Portland started asking 1,200 anonymous people by phone, two years ago, how they felt about coming to the city. They wanted to look for snapshots of feeling rather than big data. Asked in 2019 how many had heard of Portland in the media in the last two months, 24% said yes, and 51% of them said it was a positive mention. By 2020, it peaked at 69% having seen recent media coverage, and all of it had been negative. This year it is back to 34%, and the negative was down to 51%.
Travel Oregon also asked if Portland is an appealing vacation destination and a safe and welcoming destination. Both questions revealed that Portland’s image took a hit, although the negative perception has shrunk in 2021. In 2020, when they asked people who had been here before if they would come back, 57% said they would, and in 2021 it was back up to 64%.
“So we’re seeing a bit of an uptick there, we have turned a corner,” Miller said. “And we are seeing an uptick in conventions coming and delegates coming in the next couple of years.” Etzel agreed. “Portland still got problems as well, the problems are going to continue until you come back downtown. And so, we just got to get our friends or family or neighbors back downtown.” Miller said Travel Portland’s ad, in the form of a letter in the New York Times, was effective because it got people talking about Portland’s image again.
On the upside, Portland International Airport enters Christmas week expecting to welcome more than half a million travelers, all in the last two weeks of 2021. Etzel concluded, “We’ve been in a bubble and things are really bad here. But we only knew Portland because we were stuck here. And, as I started to travel more this year, it is interesting that so many places are in the same spot we are. And so, we’re not alone in it, that doesn’t create any reason for us to shy away from confronting and dealing with it.”
