Oregon Group Hires Climate Scientist to Walk the Talk on Coastal Tourism
Photo Credit: The Oregon Coast's regional tourism board is tackling climate action head on. Unsplash / MJ Tangonan
Skift Take
The Oregon Coast Visitors Association's push to tackle climate is encouraging news for the U.S. travel industry, starting with hiring a Ph.D. climate consultant. Figuring out what works for each destination is a complex undertaking but every minute counts to mitigate the climate's impact on tourism. The clock is ticking.
As surprising as it might seem, a U.S. destination management organization stepping up to tackle climate action head on remains a novelty in the travel industry, despite America ranking among the world's top three biggest carbon polluters.
But that’s what the Oregon Coast Visitors Association (OCVA) is doing, one of seven destination marketing groups for Oregon — it's placing climate change front and center on its agenda, pushed in part by the return of wildfires to Oregon's coastline, followed by a global pandemic, supply chain disruptions and record crowds heading to its great outdoors.
A signatory of the Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency initiative and thereafter the Glasgow Declaration, OCVA is now blazing a path from which other U.S. tourism offices could learn, as climate continues to disrupt America’s travel industry, not to mention an ongoing pandemic.
“The more conversations we had, once you have that lens of thinking about climate
