Although businesses in Sisters were “on pins and needles” after the impacts of the 2025 Flat Fire and soft winter tourism, Scott Humpert, executive director of Explore Sisters, was optimistic about attracting visitors during this year’s peak season. “For a region built around drive-to destinations, outdoor recreation, and short regional getaways, the fundamentals look favorable,” he said in a June presentation that touted the favorable Memorial Day weekend for local merchants, and an uptick in lodging reservations. “Barring a damaging fire season or broader economic disruption, Sisters should see another strong summer,” he predicted.
Then on July 16, lightning triggered the Akawa Butte Fire, which became the nation’s highest-priority wildfire for resource allocation because of the threat it posed to nearby communities, and — at the peak of the blaze that scorched some 27,500 acres before being contained — had more than 1,000 firefighters assigned to the Sisters area.
“Although we’re the welcome wagon that inspires people to come visit, Explore Sisters has to balance the boost tourists bring to the local economy with the health and safety of the town overall, and we need to be very careful with our messaging,” Humpert said. “We have to tiptoe that line.”
So while the Akawa Butte fire raged, forcing Level 1 through Level 3 evacuations and causing traffic jams on local highways, “we turned off our marketing on social media entirely, and consolidated information about official wildfire resources on our website to help alleviate visitor confusion; that’s the last thing we needed.”
Humpert continued: “We listened to community members and first responders to learn when it was safe to go back to normal. And when we got the green light, Explore Sisters reinvigorated its marketing activities, emphasizing that the town itself was safe, open, and ready for visitors.”
He explained that “we used to rely on a more static marketing strategy that focused primarily on the many attractions and activities available in the Sisters area. But now wildfires are becoming a way of life; it’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but rather ‘when,’ which adds another layer to the equation.”
As a result, “marketing campaigns need to be nimble and more dynamic, so we’re ready to pivot based on current realities — whether it’s lack of snow in a given winter, or smoke-reduced visibility in July and August. Even in the worst-case scenario of wildfires, no two events are the same. Each can behave differently, and our messaging needs to reflect that.”
Toward that end, said Humpert, “we have developed a crisis communications plan to have in our back pocket so we can move quickly.”
He also emphasized that “much of what Explore Sisters does is based on partnerships with local and regional groups, as opposed to operating independently. We all face similar challenges — wildfires being a dramatic example — so there is a lot of overlap in our promotional efforts, and in coordinating our communications strategies.”
More than half of Sisters’ economic base is tourism, Humpert said, with 2024 spending totaling more than $50 million. “In addition to visitors eating in our restaurants and shopping in our stores, this money — which includes transient lodging taxes for hotels and short-term rentals at a rate of 8.99 percent — goes into the Sisters general fund.”
Last year, he said, “hotel tax revenues added up to $1.2 million, of which one-third was reinvested in marketing efforts. The remaining two-thirds is used to support the city’s programs and services such as safety (such as contracting with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office), park maintenance and infrastructure development. This connection underscores the importance of our marketing efforts.”
Bottom line: “Our job is to communicate that the greater Central Oregon area in general, and Sisters in particular, still offer a great experience year-round,” said Humpert. “As our website extolls, ‘Life is short. Spend some of it in Sisters.’”
