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OSU-Cascades Gifted $60k For Sustainable Tourism Lab

BEND, OR -- OSU-Cascades has received a $60,000 gift from Visit McMinnville, the tourism board for that Willamette Valley city. Todd Montgomery is the Founder and Director of OSU’s Sustainable Tourism Lab, and says the money will further his team’s work, "It first started with Visit Bend in January. They gave us a gift to essentially allow us to launch the Sustainable Tourism Lab. And then, McMinnville has graciously joined us. What both of these groups show is that they’re really at the tip of the spear as it relates to sustainable tourism."

Montgomery defines "sustainable" as balancing the benefits of tourism with the costs, "There’s environmental costs, there’s society costs and, of course, there’s economic. By knowing what the community wants and what has worked in other communities, we can find out what those benefits are and we kind find out a way to really address those costs in the most equitable way possible."

He tells KBND News it’s important for communities to have reliable data, "There is this perception that it is negative. But honestly, and this is across the board, it’s rarely ever quantified. And the surveys that do try to quantify it, 80% of those had a significant amount of bias, in one way or the other. I think where we sit is a chance to really be a uniter on this and be an objective source of information."

Montgomery says this latest gift will benefit communities across the country as research expands. It'll help pay for continuing a five-year study on tourism impacts, student researchers and studying other places. 

 

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