Visit Bend & Crook County Understand the Concept

To some it may sound like a strange connection, but Visit Bend and Crook County along with Brasada Ranch understand that effective marketing programs can work to expand tourism all over Central Oregon.

In an announcement last week, Visit Bend said that an effort to bring more tourism to Crook County has been greeted with great enthusiasm by Crook County and representatives of Brasada Ranch because the inclusion in Visit Bend’s marketing programs really works.

According to a news release from Visit Bend, the County first joined Visit Bend’s marketing programs in March 2014 following the approval of a tourism grant application submitted by Brasada Ranch. The initial approval was for a six month period through August 2014. During that time, Brasada Ranch has shown that Visit Bend has become the number one website referrer to Brasada.com, outpacing all other websites by thousands, with the obvious exception of Google.

Using sophisticated online and telephone tracking systems, Brasada Ranch has shown the reservations and transient room taxes generated by Visit Bend marketing programs have been 2-2.5 time more than the County’s initial investment.

“Brasada Ranch has clearly shown that if we make an investment in Visit Bend, we’ll more than get our money back,” said Crook County Commissioner Seth Crawford. “Better yet, the partnership has done much more than just promote Brasada Ranch, as Brasada Ranch in turn has been great at promoting all of the County’s attractions to its guest and owners. It has created an opportunity for more tourism dollars to flow into Crook County. This has been a great win-win for all of us.”

Over the summer, Brasada Ranch asked the County to renew the Visit Bend investment, but the TRT recipient budgets had already been approved for the upcoming fiscal year. Commissioner Crawford decided not to give up and met with various tourism entities including the Fairgrounds, Historical Society and Chamber of Commerce.

Eventually all three TRT recipients agreed to divert funds from their organization to the County’s Tourism Grant to continue the work with Visit Bend from September 2014 through June 2015. The County Court approved a reinvestment in the Visit Bend marketing programs. 61 percent of the approved funds will come from the County’s tourism grant funds, 29 percent from Brasada Ranch.

“Since acquiring Brasada Ranch in late 2010, Brasada Ranch’s annual transient room tax payments to Crook County have grown by more than 550 percent, which of course means we’re doing well and the County is doing well,” said Brent McLean, senior vice president for Northview Hotel Group. “The County has been a good steward of these precious tax dollars, and its willingness to think outside the box and try new things, like the Visit Bend marketing programs, has been much appreciated and a great investment for all.”

All lodging properties in Central Oregon charge TRT and remit the same to their county or city. The use of those funds varies by region. In Deschutes County approximately 30 percent of the TRT is used to promote tourism via Central Oregon Visitors Association. In the City of Bend approximately 30 percent of the TRT is used to promote tourism via Visit Bend. In Crook County, where Brasada Ranch is located, approximately 20 percent of the TRT is used to promote tourism via the Chamber of Commerce; though unlike Deschutes County and The City of Bend, one TRT payer makes up a disproportionate amount of the TRT (Brasada Ranch makes up more than 85 percent of the County’s TRT collections each year; this percentage has been growing each year since the resort was acquired by Northview Hotel Group in late 2010).

“The key to growing our TRT lies in promoting to tourists outside of our region. The Central Oregon Visitors Association and Visit Bend have millions of dollars for this type of promotion each year, and Visit Bend’s ability to drive more and more traffic to Brasada Ranch has been unmatched,” said Seth Crawford. “I very much look forward to this partnership continuing to perform so that we can continue to grow our TRT to levels that will allow us to make more investments within the County, such as developing the River Canyon Country marketing initiatives we laid out with the help of Travel Oregon earlier this year.”

Without a lot of fanfare, Visit Bend and Crook County have formed a partnership that is proving to be very effective in bringing to Central Oregon valuable tourism dollars and effectively enhancing our economic growth.