Let’s think about this. Why is Visit Bend going to start encouraging more tourists to come to Bend in the summer?

Visit Bend, the city’s contractor that promotes tourism to Bend, has not promoted tourists coming to Bend in the summer for the past five years.

Why not? Historically, Bend has had no shortage of tourists in the summer. Bendites may not have turned out to spray tourists with water pistols as Barcelona residents have done, but maybe they thought about it.

Tourism in the summer in Bend appears to have dipped recently. Although nobody keeps an exact count of how many visit Bend, collections of the city’s tourism taxes have leveled off, after having grown fairly steadily over the past 10 years. Hotel occupancy rates have also dropped closer to 60% when they had been closer to 70%.

Wildfire smoke is the likely suspect for the cause, Visit Bend says, though there may be others. And what may be coming this summer? Maybe more wildfire smoke. Maybe economic uncertainty.

Representatives from Visit Bend told the city’s Bend Economic Development Advisory Board Monday that it planned to begin marketing to encourage more tourists to come to Bend in the summer.

The bulk of Bend’s tourism room tax, which has been raising a bit under $15 million a year,  actually does go to the city of Bend. That’s the destination for roughly 65%. It’s money available for public safety, roads and other key services. Visit Bend gets the remainder.

Visit Bend, to its credit, does more with its dollars than lure tourists. For instance, it also has supported events in the community, such as the BendFilm Festival and a Juneteenth celebration, among many others. It also has had campaigns to encourage tourists to behave and help keep Bend a place where people want to come.

We see the benefits of tourism as well as its inconveniences and wear and tear. But if the reason tourism is suffering is wildfire smoke, the answer is not more tourism promotion targeted toward summer visits, it is more resources dedicated to the real problem, wildfire risk.