PORT ANGELES — Local tourism officials are developing a plan to create a sustainable year-round tourism industry on the north Olympic Peninsula.

Led by the Olympic Peninsula Visitors Bureau, the five-year strategic plan will aim at how to bring visitors here in the non-summer months.

Marsha Massey is the executive director at the bureau. She says the strategic plan will look at attracting people here, and what infrastructure is needed to sustain a year-round product.

“Covid changed things a lot. Covid changed things about how people travel and where they travel and who travels and that sort of thing. So, it seemed a good time for the industry to sort of look ahead and say ‘where do we want to be in the next five years’. You know, how can we get our arms around this and be a little more strategic in our growth and development. So we’ve undertaken a tourism master plan a 5-year tourism master plan for the Olympic Peninsula really with the goal of developing. Oh, geez, that will create a more sustainable more year-round economy really with a focus on the shoulder season in the winter. We’re not looking to draw more people in the summer,” said Massey.

The plan began with surveys of those in the direct tourism industry. By late this summer, the group had surveyed residents of the area. Massey says they far exceeded their hoped-for turnout.

“We started with something called a “destination next” survey and that was a sort of more intense detailed survey that was sent to industry people to civic leaders to our county and city officials and so forth. We had 168 responses to that. We did 10 focus groups that were sort of by industry sector. We’ve done over 30 interviews one-on-one interviews. And then we rolled out this residence survey. We set a goal of 500. We set a stretch goal of 1,000 and we had over 14-hundred people take part,” said Massey.

Massey says the strategic plan builds on top of data from the national park service that shows the impact of tourism to the Olympic Peninsula was over 320-million dollars in 2022. But she says there’s a lot the area has to offer around the park and all year round too.

“Part of it is just getting people to embrace what is here. We are running a campaign right now that’s titled: ‘The coast is Clear’, and the whole idea is that it’s quieter. It’s more relaxed and you know come and enjoy it like a local.”

Massey says they’ve hired a consultant to help draft the plan. They hope to release a draft of it early next year.