Jeff Knapp, the former head of Visit McMinnville, has been selected to lead Visit Bend, after a nationwide search.

Knapp starts June 10. He replaces Kevney Dugan, who led the organization for six years and left in January.

While Bend’s 1.4 million visitors a year is more robust than the tourism in McMinnville, Knapp is known for his balanced approach to tourism by promoting sustainability and profitability, according to a statement by Visit Bend. Knapp helped launch the tourism marketing agency in McMinnville, a city of 30,000 people in a mid-Willamette Valley region with 250 wineries.

Knapp said that he was excited to continue the work of those before him.

“Bend is leading the charge of stewardship,” Knapp said. “The thing that excites me most is that Bend is leaps and bounds ahead in doing this. It’s doing the work similar to what I’m doing in McMinnville. We treat the visitor industry as an economic developer.”

Tourism is an economic driver in Bend. In 2023 travel spending totaled $383.4 million in Bend.

Travel and leisure employed 3,470 people in the city in 2023, according to a Visit Bend report.

The board of directors at Visit Bend hired the recruiting firm Searchwide Global to find Dugan’s replacement.

Dugan left in January to take a position at Travel Oregon, the state’s marketing agency.

“We were looking for a genuine, passionate, approachable and experienced leader, and I know that we found that in Jeff,” said Todd Montgomery, Visit Bend chairman and Oregon State University hospitality management instructor and executive in residence.

“We feel Jeff will respect the hard work and thoughtfulness that has gone into the strategic planning around Visit Bend’s creative initiatives.”

One of those initiatives calls for using a portion of the room tax, which funds Visit Bend, to fund community-generated projects that sustain and steward sites and programs. Since 2021, the sustainability fund has awarded $2.3 million to projects.

Another program is the Bend Cultural Tourism Fund that provides grants to support programs such as the American West Art Festival, or the Bend Brewfest.

Since the fund’s creation, more than $2 million has been used for 102 projects, according to the Visit Bend website.

“Bend is attractive because of the quality of life and many things that it offers and it’s because of tourism,” Knapp said. “I feel like I’m getting a huge opportunity to have a serious, positive impact on the community and will build on the work done by Kevney and Nate Wyeth (Visit Bend vice president of marketing).”