The Visitors

Photo article excerpted from Willamette Week. Read more here. 

You’re not wrong: The lines for hazelnut ice cream really are getting longer each year.

Portland is attracting tourists in record numbers. In 2018, visitor spending in the Portland metro area hit an all-time high: $5.3 billion, a 47 percent increase from 2010. That’s a significant boon to the local economy. Travel Portland estimates the hospitality industry employs 36,360 workers, and as WW reported last year, the city is in the midst of a hotel construction spree (“Local’s Guide to Luxury Hotels,” Aug. 29, 2018).

But popularity can be overwhelming. In record numbers, visitors are coming to Portland to hog our trails, smoke our weed and drink our beer.

We joined them.

This week—with the Rose Festival jamming the waterfront with celebrants—WW sent a photographer and several reporters to spend a week among the tourists. So we rode in a helicopter and boarded two weed buses and braved Multnomah Falls on a Saturday. We even hopped on the BrewCycle. Along the way, we examined the scofflaw companies taking advantage of the demand while evading city regulators and asked hotel concierge desks what tourists really want.

We wanted to see this city from the perspective of people who view it as a vacation destination. Turns out, it’s a nice place to visit.

Where Young People Go to Vacation

This is one of the most crowded weeks in downtown Portland, thanks to the throngs of tourists jamming the waterfront and Old Town during the Rose Festival. Most of them are your fellow Oregonians. Data compiled by the travel market research firm Longwoods International gives a snapshot of who visits Portland. However much national attention Portlandia has brought, the vast majority of visitors hail from Oregon and Washington. And this is no Branson, Mo.—most of the tourists are under the age of 44. Perhaps the most striking finding: Tourists visiting Portland are even more likely to be white than the locals. (Portland is 70 percent white; visitors are 83 percent white.)

State of Origin

Oregon: 28%

Washington: 26%

California: 20%

Florida: 3%

Idaho: 2%

Arizona: 2%

New York: 2%

Texas: 2%

Age

18-24 years: 13%

25-34 years: 23%

35-44 years: 20%

45-54 years: 17%

55-64 years: 13%

65 years and up: 14%

Race

White: 83%

Black: 3%

Other: 14%