Member Login
Washington State’s Office of Tourism closed it’s doors in 2011. Since then, our state is the only one in the country that has no statewide tourism marketing entity. Tourism dollars are absolutely critical to the success of our wine industry and often times our wineries are the reason tourists decide to travel to our state and spend their money at hotels, restaurants, rental cars, etc.
WWI has been a part of leading this effort for the past three years and will continue being vocal about the need to reignite our statewide tourism marketing to the country and world.
SB 5251:
• Creates a private/public partnership that will reignite our statewide tourism marketing
• The funding mechanism is a 2-to-1 private-to-public match. If the bill is adopted as currently written, in the next three years our tourism budget be as strong as $15 million per biennium
• Creates a new board of directors to collectively lead on Washington State’s tourism marketing decisions
• The bill has specific language that requires this new board to focus tourism marketing on rural economies, where many of our wineries are located