Portland’s reputation among potential tourists took a major hit this year, according to a survey commissioned by Travel Portland, which promotes the city’s tourism industry.
In an Oct. 1 survey of 1,250 people nationwide conducted by consumer research company Engine Insights, 69% of respondents said they had generally seen Portland mentioned negatively in the media and 37% said they considered the city an unappealing vacation destination.
In comparison, 32% of respondents considered Portland an appealing vacation destination, marking the first time since Travel Portland started the survey in 2019 that more respondents considered Portland unappealing than appealing. The remaining 31% of respondents said they didn’t have an opinion either way.
That compares to 54% of respondents saying they considered Portland an appealing travel destination at the beginning of 2020 and 43% saying they considered Portland appealing at the start of 2019. Travel Portland, which cut its staff by 40% in April as tourism and hotel revenue plummeted, ran the survey four times in 2019, but just twice this year due to budget cuts.
“I’m still very optimistic that Portland is a compelling story, and once you get here, you get it,” Travel Portland President Jeff Miller said.
Portland, like cities across the country, has seen tourism plummet this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Hotel revenue in Portland was down nearly 76% in October as compared to the same month last year, while hotel revenue in Portland’s central city, where seven hotels still remain closed, was down nearly 84%, said Miller in a presentation to the Portland City Council Wednesday.
Oregon’s lodging sector has shed 8,600 jobs in the past year, with total employment plummeting by one-third.
The City of Portland received $30.8 million in general fund money from hotel room taxes in the 2019-20 fiscal year, a figure that is sure to drop substantially this year.
But the coronavirus pandemic isn’t the only challenge that Portland’s tourism industry could face as it tries to recover.
Portland drew national media coverage this summer as demonstrators and local and federal law enforcement officials clashed in nightly protests downtown, giving the city a reputation for upheaval. Downtown businesses began boarding their windows after many were looted during a riot on May 30 following a peaceful protest for racial justice.
While some business owners have begun taking boards down in recent months, there has continued to be well-publicized instances of vandalism by a small group of people using the protests as a cover.
About 30% of respondents surveyed in October considered Portland to be safe, while 35% said it was welcoming. At the beginning of the year, 58% of respondents said Portland was a welcoming destination and 51% of respondents considered Portland to be safe.
“The news coverage obviously was overblown in some instances so what people saw, not only around the country, but around the world were very small sections of the city,” Miller said when asked about the survey by Commissioner Dan Ryan.
Among respondents who had previously visited Portland, 75% said they were likely to visit again, a similar percentage to those who said they would return in the 2019 surveys. Miller said those results didn’t surprise him given the general response that Travel Portland has heard over the years from tourists, but the results did give him optimism that Portland will be able to rebound quickly once the pandemic comes to an end.
More than 160,000 group room nights in Portland were cancelled this year as large events and conventions were banned due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the city still has 110 conventions and group events on the books over the next five years accounting for over 420,000 room nights. Sixty one of those events are booked for 2022 and 2023.
“We’re well-poised on the convention side, which helps everything else,” Miller said.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the city has to genuinely acknowledge the structural issues that have led to inequities in housing and economic opportunities, but said he hopes outsiders will see the positives of what Portland has to offer. He said he expects Portland to remain an attractive tourist destination and a top culinary destination once travel begins to increase following the pandemic.
“I want people to not just see problems as they look at Fox News or wherever,” Wheeler said. “I want them to see a community that can acknowledge and own those problems and demonstrate that we’re leaders enough, each and every one of us in this community, to address them. I have a lot of confidence in Portlanders. We’re up to those challenges and I hope some of that energy also becomes part of the way people view this city, that Portland is a can-do city.”
-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg
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