On the road: Tourism in Washington remains vital to state’s economy

EASTERN WASHINGTON — Tourism in eastern Washington may have been hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic, much like the rest of the state and the rest of the world, but it is recovering quicker than western Washington, said Michelle Thana, Director of Marketing with State of Washington Tourism (SWT).

“You have a little bit different patterns of visitation in Eastern Washington,” said Thana. “You don’t necessarily have the numbers that are coming in from Seattle, but it’s growing and that’s also where a lot of the potential for growth and tourism is – east of the Cascades.”

Speaking more broadly, about Washington state as a whole, Thana said that tourism is very important to the state’s economy, as it makes up the state’s fourth largest industry, but this does not mean that tourism in Washington is well funded.

“A lot of parts of the US have seen full recovery. One thing is that Washington doesn’t have a lot of funding for promoting tourism. We’re one of the lowest, if not the lowest state,” said Thana.

According to a press release from the SWT, Washington’s tourism industry has still not fully recovered from COVID-19, and is lagging behind other states. The release specified that visitor spending in Washington, when adjusted for inflation, was only 86.3% of 2019 levels, and the volume of visitation was 93%.

The press release also noted that in 2022, tourism supported more than 220,000 jobs in the State of Washington, a 10.5% increase over the previous year but still 7.7% below 2019 levels. These job sectors included food and beverage, recreation and entertainment, lodging, retail trade and more. According to the release, prior to the pandemic, the leisure/hospitality segment led job growth in the state before declining by 40% in 2020.

Eastern Washington’s primary tourism industries are less focused on the international travel that is so important on the western side of Washington and more focused on attractions and activities that include wine country, outdoor recreation and sports, said Thana. She also said that some of the larger cities have a fairly sizable convention market.

Thana said that SWT works directly with individual counties in their statewide effort to increase tourism.

“We try to work with the local destination marketing organizations, for example, Yakima Valley Tourism or Visit Spokane. We’ll partner with them just to kind of understand what their priorities are and what their messaging is.”

Tourism is not just important on a state scale, its vital for these counties and smaller entities. Kate Hudson, Public Relations Manager of Visit Spokane, provided some statistics that give context to just how important tourism is for Spokane in particular.

“Tourism is a major economic driver for Spokane County. In 2022, tourism generated $1.4 billion in economic impact and accounted for more than 17,000 jobs. Tourism also provided $1,045 in tax relief for every household in Spokane County,” said Hudson.

Hudson said that Spokane’s recovery is on par with the rest of the country, which differs from SWT’s assessment of the state as a whole.

“The disruption of COVID is behind us, and the future for conventions in Spokane will return more robust than ever. In keeping trend with the rest of the country, Spokane should exceed its all-time 2019 high by 2025,” Hudson said in an email to the Basin Business Journal.

According to Visit Spokane’s 2022 Tourism Economic Impact report, Spokane’s visitor volume was 9.64 million visitors, which is the highest since 2019’s 9.76 million visitors.

Another major tourist spot in eastern Washington is Yakima Valley, said Thana. Yakima Valley Tourism’s annual report for 2022 echoes the State of Washington Tourism’s sentiments on the industry – it is in recovery but still lagging.

According to the report, tourism is nonetheless still a large contributor to Yakima County’s economy. Travelers spent $342 million dollars in the Yakima Valley, and supported more than 4,600 jobs for Yakima Valley residents.

“Tourism is really important to Washington. It’s bounced back quite a bit. Not all the way, but quite a bit, but there’s definitely room to get all the way back…but we think that there’s an opportunity to grow the economic impact even more,” said Thana.