South Coast Travel Impacts 2024

August 14, 2025

Preliminary data for 2024 from a Dean Runyan Associates study for the Oregon Tourism Commission shows that total direct travel spending in Oregon rose 1.1% in 2024 compared with the 2023 total. Travel spending rose from $14.15 billion in 2023 to $14.3 billion in 2024, an inflation-adjusted increase of 1.0%. Adjusted for inflation, Oregon’s total direct travel spending was 6% below the 2019 pre-pandemic total. Travel -related employment, which declined by about 21% from 2019 to 2020 had recovered those jobs in two years, rising slightly above the pre-pandemic total to reach 120,500 in 2023. In 2024 travel-related employment grew slightly, up by 480 jobs or 0.4%.

Travel Spending Little Changed in 2024

At Oregon’s South Coast, travel spending reached a pre-pandemic peak of $431.5 million in 2019 and then declined to reach a low of $296.3 million during the pandemic in 2020. The trend reversed with the South Coast making progress recovering from the pandemic downturn reaching $385.8 million in 2021. In 2023, travel spending increased to $577.6 million, at the South Coast. Direct travel spending in 2024 was little changed at $577.7 million. From 2019 to 2024, inflation-adjusted total travel spending rose by about $48 million or 9.1% at the South Coast.

Accommodations ($175.3 million) and food service ($156 million) combined to account for just over one-half of travel spending on the South Coast last year. Arts, entertainment and recreation ($61.5 million); food stores ($58.1 million); local transportation and gas ($56.8 million); retail sales ($55.3 million); and visitor air transportation spending ($5.3 million) made up the rest of South Coast travel spending in 2024.

Travel Related Employment Down From 2023 Peak

Travel spending was attributed to 6,080 South Coast jobs in 2024, slipping by 2.8% from the peak in 2023 of 6,230 jobs. The South Coast lost an estimated travel-generated 550 jobs during the pandemic in 2020. Two years later the South Coast had regained all the travel generated jobs lost during the pandemic by 2022 and was above the pre-pandemic total by 470 jobs. Industry employment generated by travel spending had a similar distribution as overall travel spending by industry. About 65% of all travel-generated employment was in the accommodations and food services industry. Approximately one-in-five travel-generated jobs were in the arts, entertainment and recreation industry, and 11% were in the retail trade sector.

Tax Revenue up in 2024

Tax revenue, mostly from lodging taxes and income tax payments attributable to travel industry income of businesses and employees, totaled $23 million in 2024 on Oregon’s South Coast. Local tax revenues increased by 1.4% in 2024 rising from $5.9 million to $6.0 million over the prior year, while state tax revenue attributable to travel spending rose from about $16.9 million in 2023 to about $17.0 million in 2024, a 0.4% increase. There were more than 4.7 million person-night overnight visitor stays at the South Coast in 2024, according to preliminary estimates.

While some don’t consider travel and tourism as an “export-oriented” industry, the Dean Runyan Associates report does a nice job of detailing why this sector does fit the criteria of an export-oriented industry, due to the influx of resources that flow into an economy from outside of the region. The travel impact report states the gross domestic product of the travel industry was $7.2 billion in 2025, accounting 2% of Oregon’s total gross domestic product. Overall, the travel industry is one of the three largest export-oriented industries in rural Oregon counties with the other two being agriculture/food processing and logging/wood products.

For the entire report go to:  Travel Impacts Oregon, 2024

Interactive tables and other Oregon data from the Oregon Tourism Commission: https://industry.traveloregon.com/research/category/all-research/.