Experience Olympia & Beyond CEO Annette Pitts updated the Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) at a meeting yesterday that priorities under Thurston County’s tourism-centered Destination Master Plan (DMP) are expected to be implemented in the first quarter of 2025.
The ten-year “community-driven sustainable tourism plan” is a comprehensive framework of the vision, goals, and strategies for the sustainable development of the county’s tourism sector focused on visitor needs and resident priorities.
According to the plan’s page, the project’s planning phase was completed in June 2024.
It garnered around a thousand pieces of feedback and provided an inclusive roadmap to the vision of the future of Thurston County.
DMP has been in the works since 2016, when Thurston County was determined as a weak destination, and weak in terms of community alignment after an assessment.
“My predecessor had went through a process called DNEXT assessment for Thurston County, it’s an industry standard measurement process where they bring this consultant in they create a very large survey and they have a whole gaggle of variables that they measure your performance as a destination on,” said Pitts.
As over 1,000 locals and visitors participated in the plan’s development process, Pitts emphasized that the DMP is a solid repository of findings from the community.
Pitts’ report also indicated that the county was still struggling to rebound from lost hospitality jobs due to COVID-19. The DMP will provide a framework to coordinate community alignment and foster a strategic path toward job growth by bolstering destination strength.
Experience Olympia and Beyond (EOB), the county’s official destination marketing organization shifted its vision from a marketing-only to a marketing and destination management organization.
“A lot of folks reasonably when you ask them out what is the job of the visitor bureau, they’ll say well it’s to help people find good vacations…bring them here, get them to have fun, vacation with your family or who they’re traveling with, and that is part of what we do. But the real goal is to serve our community and to help be a partner in delivering community quality of life,” said Pitts.
The EOB Board has identified the following priorities, which it hopes to bolster in an “ideal, high-level view.”
Initial implementation
Advocacy
Monitoring
EOB Board also identified initiatives and initial priorities aside from the aforementioned areas. The ones with an asterisk (*) are priorities the board wants more attention to.
Pitts said these areas were narrowed down because of staff and budget limitations.
EOB Board and staff plan to implement the priorities gradually in the first quarter of 2025. The DMP Steering Committee will transition into the DMP Taskforce, and additional community leaders and residents will be invited to quarterly meetings to report on progress and share information and resources.
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