For six years, Kevney Dugan, Visit Bend CEO, has steered the city’s visitor industry by touting its attributes.

Not a hard sell by any means as more than 1.4 million visitors come Bend every year to enjoy the same things residents love: the great outdoors, vibrant business community and a robust population.

But as any leader knows, too much of a good thing can tarnish the attraction. Too many visitors and there’s traffic, trampled trails and a plethora of vacation rentals.

So with good marketing comes good stewardship, said Dugan, who joined Visit Bend in 2010 as the director of sales. It’s a balancing act, especially when the vision is to preserve what’s special about Bend for future generations.

Achieving that balance will likely be Dugan’s legacy. He has accepted a new job at the state’s destination marketing agency, Travel Oregon, as vice president of Destination Stewardship.

Colleagues in the tourism industry say Dugan’s vision elevated Bend’s status as a destination and has even made it a leader among other destinations in Oregon. His passion for the outdoors, something honed while fly-fishing as a youth in Michigan, helped to guide Dugan as he sought to share what he loved about Bend in a way that would not destroy it.

“In 2017, when I took the CEO role, the question was how do we support the economy while also looking more holistically at the intended and unintended consequences of the industry,” said Dugan, 42. “What we created in Visit Bend is a model that has more programs and more levers to pull so we can address industry and community interests, not just serve as a marketing agency.”

“To take the education from working in the community of Bend, that’s a bit more mature destination, and share the learning about where Bend got it right or wrong to communities across the state is an amazing opportunity,” Dugan said.

Tourism as an industry

There was a time when Bend didn’t look as developed as it does now, with a vibrant, dynamic community centered on the river and outdoor recreation.

Coming out of the Great Recession in 2010, Bend’s leaders looked to tourism as a way to help the community rebound, said Dugan. He was hired to ramp up Bend’s group sales efforts with an emphasis on national championship sporting events, like Cyclocross Nationals, and focused his energies on getting people to visit here.

“At the time, tourism was seen as a way to keep the economy going, keep businesses and the momentum of the community going,” Dugan said. “Some people only know Bend what it looks like today with numerous breweries, shopping areas and vast recreational opportunities. But that wasn’t always the narrative of this community.”

Ben Hemson, Bend Economic Development manager, said that the role of Visit Bend under Dugan’s leadership has evolved over the years but it’s importance to the economy is relatively stable.

“The proportion of local jobs related to tourism in the region has remained stable over the past 10 years,” Hemson said. “A robust economic expansion across all sectors means more people in Bend work in tourism than ever before earning higher wages than they have historically.”

Anyone staying in a hotel or vacation rental in Bend pays a 10.4% transient room tax to the city of Bend.

About seven years ago, the board of directors at Visit Bend agreed with Dugan that Visit Bend should focus its marketing on the so-called shoulder seasons — the months before and after summer travel — and direct some of the funds generated by the room tax to supporting culture and destination sustainability.

These initiatives were out of the box thinking, said former Visit Bend board member Dave Nissen, who founded Wanderlust Tours in Bend. Since it began in 2021, the sustainability fund has awarded $2.3 million to local stewardship groups.

“Kevney and his team established perhaps the first sustainability fund in the United States using tourism-spent dollars,” Nissen said. “Recognizing the need to care for nature, (Dugan) devised a plan, and shared his plan with other communities, linking the transient room taxes as a funding mechanism to improve areas people impact.”

Building bridges

Under Dugan, Visit Bend has focused on driving traffic to the region, but trying to do that sustainably by targeted marketing during the non peak times and talking to the community about the impacts of travel and tourism, said Nissen, who served on the Visit Board board of directors from 2009 through 2018.

“Kevney has a knack of building bridges through means of listening, empathy, dialog, ingenuity, vision, action and follow through,” Nissen said. “Each of these skills are made manifest in his makeup. Bend has been made a better place because of his adroit and innate abilities and the desire to seek common good.”

Noelle Fredland, a Visit Bend board member since 2008, said Visit Bend has grown into an organization that is more than a marketing agent for the city. The focus, under Dugan’s guidance, has become about strategy and sustainability all the while supporting those in the industry, said Fredland, a former marketing director for the Old Mill District and amphitheater.

“Visit Bend is redefining what a destination management organization can achieve,” Fredland said. “We are looking forward to all the great things Kevney will be doing at the state level to support this important work and to see Visit Bend continue building on this legacy.”

Looking ahead

With Visit Bend’s current focus on natural resource preservation and enhancement, a higher benchmark has been set for others in the industry, said Julia Theisen, Visit Central Oregon CEO.

“His (Dugan’s) strategic vision and leadership have elevated Visit Bend, the region and the entire tourism sector,” Thiesen said. “We look forward to continuing to work together as colleagues and friends and wish him well in his new chapter at Travel Oregon.”

Travel Oregon saw Dugan’s work as visionary and sought to bring the Bend way to a statewide perspective, said Todd Davidson, CEO of Travel Oregon.

“I’m excited to have him lead Travel Oregon’s destination stewardship team, and to have his talents and abilities amplify our efforts to drive positive economic, environmental and social impacts statewide,” Davidson said.

Dugan, who grew up in northern Michigan catching trout in any waterway he could find, said being outdoors is at the core of who he is.

“I find meaning from this work by taking care of the resources and ultimately drive the industry in a destination like Bend,” Dugan said. “I am lucky to have found a job that allows my personal passions to be impacted by daily work in a non-traditional way.”

He and his family have set down roots in Bend. He and his wife, an elementary school teacher, will remain in town.

The 11-member board of directors ideally would like to find a replacement for Dugan by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, said Todd Montgomery, Oregon State University-Cascades hospitality management instructor and executive in residence.

The board will be looking for someone who will focus on economic development and stewardship, said Montgomery, who is chairman of the Visit Bend board of directors.

“Finding the right balance is a key point for us,” said Montgomery. “Kevney has done a great job to find that balance. There’s no playbook for this now. We’re innovating and see a lot of destination management organizations looking to learn from us.”