Page 75 - Clackamas County Watertourism Strategic Plan. Final.v3

STRATEGIC PLAN FOR WATER-BASED TOURISM IN CLACKAMAS COUNTY, OREGON THE MARKET
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Chapter 5 THE MARKET

The Market Area
The market area for water-based tourism in Clackamas County is the geography from which most existing visitors, and potentially new visitors, reside. There is no single source of
information from which to determine the market area. Water-based visitors come for different reasons and visit a wide range of places within the county. They may purchase
campground reservations, visit a museum, or register at an information center. Collecting the residence of visitors is a challenging endeavor since each source has its internal
biases. For example, people who stop at visitor centers are primarily out-of-state, or at least, out-of-town guests, who are looking for information and usually have a flexible
schedule. On the other hand, frequent visitors are an important market, but they rarely stop at information centers. Using a variety of sources is necessary to piece together the
market area. For this study, data was reviewed from any source we could acquire and includes: campground registration; guestbook sign-ins; and the zip codes of the permit or
license holders from the recreation survey.

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 because their credit card processors keep this information.

Portland Gas and Electric manages several campgrounds in the upper
Table 5-1: Residence of Visitor to PGE Campground Sites.
Clackamas River area. Registration for these campsites includes zip
Promontory Park Timothy Lake
code data and were made available for this study. The results are
Northeast 0.00% 0.00%
shown in table 4-1. Promontory Park campground is visited by
Mid-Atlantic 0.78% 0.12%
Southeast 1.00% 0.06% Oregon residents 8 out of 10 times and visitors to Timothy Lake are
Mid-West 0.89% 0.15% 90% Oregon residents. Between 8 and 9 percent of the visitors are
Southwest 1.22% 0.21% from Washington State and the remaining are from California with a
Northwest 92.34% 99.05% small percentage from the rest of the country.
OR 83.02% 90.24%
WA 9.32% 8.69%
West 3% 0.39% The guest book at the Zig Zag ranger station shows a very different

geographic composition. Like most visitor centers, it is visited by
people who need information or simply want to stop, take a break from travelling, and get some ideas on what to do in the area. A lesser percent is seeking site specific
information on a place they intend to go. However, most outdoor recreational travelers already have this information before they leave home. Naturally, the resulting data will
include a disproportionately large percentage of state travelers. Unlike PGE data, people visiting the Zig Zag information center are from a wide range of locations. The