Page 136 - Clackamas County Watertourism Strategic Plan. Final.v3

STRATEGIC PLAN FOR WATER-BASED TOURISM IN CLACKAMAS COUNTY, OREGON THE OPPORTUNITIES
6-33

Organizational and Institutional Recommendations Institutional &
Organizational
“Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.” Harry S Truman

Recommendation 44: Complete a Competitivity Analysis for Angling
Why do all of Oregon’s neighboring states fare better than Oregon in attracting anglers? Given the size of the market and the untapped potential for
angling tourism, it should be imperative for Oregon and Clackamas County to determine why Oregon is not attracting is proportional share of anglers (See
Chapter 4). Oregon attracts 4% of the national visiting anglers but only 2% of the nation’s visiting angler/days. The neighboring states of California, and
Washington are doing better than Oregon by at least breaking even on a relative scale. Idaho and Wyoming, two competing states with excellent western fisheries, are
generating twice as many visitor/days than their proportional share. Oregon is the only state west of Colorado that has a negative proportional share. Oregon has world
renowned fishing resources, but it appears that Oregon’s angler market potential may be bigger than what they are currently attracting. The DMO needs to conduct a
Oregon 264,424 4% 1,262,784 2% competitivity analysis that is focused specifically on recreational angling markets in Idaho, Wyoming and Oregon. A
California 97,967 1% 486,605 1% Competitivity Analysis will compare and contrast these three state-level angler markets against key market indicators
Washington 102,562 1% 341,327 1% such as: market size, visitation statistics, marketing budgets, providers, products and services offered, species of fish,
Idaho 208,418 3% 3,341,667 6% their habitats and populations, state reputations on the national market, exposure and notoriety, and other
Wyoming 193,076 3% 3,331,254 6% indicators of the market. There are two reasons that this recommendation is so important. First, because the largest
untapped potential is largely in these two states. This is the low hanging fruit for Oregon’s angler market and
therefore if they want to increase visitation, it is these states that have the greatest opportunity for Oregon to capture market share. Second, the angler market is
overwhelmingly the largest opportunity the County has in increasing water-based tourism and overnight visitation, as thoroughly explained in Chapter 4.

Recommendation 45: Create a Robust, County-wide Marketing Database
Zip code data is one of the best and easiest ways to determine the residence of a visitor. Knowing the point of origin for a visitor is highly valuable for a wide range of marketing,
business expansion, and strategic planning purposes. Ironically, these data are not collected by most tourism-based organizations or businesses. County and municipal
governments do not retain theses data on visitors even though it is collected when campers make a reservation. Even several private businesses stated that they do not have
point of origin data since their credit card processors keep this information. Knowing the point of origin of your visitors is one of the ways that you can determine if any of the
enclosed recommendations are working. Measuring visitation is essential to measuring the efficacy of the marketing efforts. Many of the recommendations made here need to
be evaluated by counting visitation, and in the next chapter, a measuring protocol may be recommended that does not yet exist because of the current state of existing visitor
databases.