QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
To spend a couple of hours in the Yachats Visitor Center is to glimpse a microcosm of summer tourism here.
There’s a surfer dude and his girlfriend cruising the West Coast before returning to their ski resort jobs in Colorado.
There are couples from Arizona escaping the blistering summer heat, a group of sisters from Missouri, a family gathering of folks from Utah and the Willamette Valley, a couple from Redmond.
And even David and Pattie Brown of Oregon City, who have been busy remodeling their vacation home in Waldport and visited Yachats for the first time last week.
“We haven’t had the opportunity to explore around yet,” said Pattie Brown, who had her mother from Vancouver, Wash. in tow. “So now we are.”
The Labor Day weekend is usually the last major event of the summer season before visitors begin tapering off through October. There’s every indication that tourism was again strong this summer on the Oregon coast and in the Yachats area – filling restaurants, motels, vacation rentals, shops, camping areas and any other place that services visitors.
The continued increase in tourism is reflected in statewide statistics, Yachats tax collections and the ringing of cash registers in shops lining Highway 101.
“Pretty much every summer is our best summer ever,” said Gary Church, who has owned Topper’s ice cream and candy store in downtown Yachats for 20 years. “We’re up every year; just a steady increase.”
One-third of visitors to Oregon – there were 33 million last year — come to the coast, according Travel Oregon, the state tourism agency. And while the north coast – Astoria to Cannon Beach – is the busiest, the central coast from Lincoln City to Florence is gaining popularity.
“Yachats is hot right now,” said Robert Anthony, who has owned Luna Sea restaurant in downtown for 11 years. “It’ll be our best summer.”
The continued upswing has led to some business expansion.
Anthony added more outdoor tables at Luna this year; the Drift Inn added a big covered patio last summer and hotel rooms this year. The Sea Note bar and restaurant opened in 2018 after a long remodel of a big, vacant building, and the Beach Street Kitchen joined Yachats’ restaurants this spring.
The added capacity and increase in tourist numbers shows up in the city’s collection of food and beverage taxes – probably the best barometer of local tourism.
In the 2018-19 fiscal year that ended June 30, the city collected $416,296 from its 5 percent tax on prepared food and beverages – a 10 percent increase over the previous year. And those tax collections for 2017-18 were up almost 17 percent over the previous year.
While the city’s share of lodging taxes from motels and vacation rentals have almost doubled the past five years to $1.06 million in 2018-19, the percentage increase the past two years has been 3.7 percent and 2 percent.
Those smaller increases reflect a stable number of motel rooms and vacation rentals and only modest increases in prices.
Enticing more offseason visitors
With coastal communities filled to capacity with tourists during the summer, the big push is to try to increase visitors during the shoulder seasons in late fall and spring when there’s room in motels and vacation rentals and open seats in restaurants.
The Oregon Coast Visitors Association, an arm of Travel Oregon that markets the coast, has developed seven goals for its work – and the top two goals are to develop off-season tourism. To help with that, in April it added a staff member, Waldport native Jesse Dolan, to work on projects on the central coast.
That’s also been the aim of the Yachats Visitor Center, which is funded by lodging taxes collected by the city but overseen by the Yachats Chamber of Commerce. The center has a recently revitalized eight-member marketing committee that is helping it re-think its marketing strategies.
It wants to develop a greater presence on social media and possibly develop more activities with an outdoor – trails are especially popular with visitors — and educational component, said center director Beverly Wilson.
The center organizes or helps with shoulder season events such as the Mushroom Festival in October, the Celtic Festival in November and the Agate Festival in February. The fledgling Honey Lovers Festival could be moving to April or May next year.
“Getting people here in the off season is always a goal,” said Wilson.
Weather and school effects
Coastal weather will always be a factor. Beautiful weather in July and August helped push visitor numbers. But snow and ice last February and heavy rain throughout April hurt lodging.
The other big component of coastal tourism is camping. State parks on the central coast have been bursting at the seams all summer, said Oregon State Parks and Recreation manager Dylan Anderson.
“Occupancy is up,” Anderson said. “This year we’ve had no vacancies throughout the day.”
As an example, he said, the big South Beach State Park near Newport has had 2,000 campers per night almost all summer – creating a small city almost the size of Waldport.
While weekday camping will drop off some when school starts next week, Anderson said, “weekends won’t slow at all” until mid-October or the first heavy rains of fall. The downside is more people beginning to use day-use areas for overnight camping, Anderson said, “and we’re having to be more aggressive about policing that.”
It’s just as busy for the handful of volunteers who help Wilson greet and direct tourists who stop in at the visitor center next to the C&K Market in downtown Yachats.
Gerald Stanley has lived in Yachats for 15 years, including a recently completed two-year term as mayor. He’s been a center volunteer for 13 years.
He greets each as they come in the door – many just duck in to use the only public restroom downtown – points to a wall of brochures, asks the where they are from, and if they have any questions. People ask for dining advice, if the bus to Florence can drop them off at Cape Perpetua, directions to Thor’s Well, or how to get to the Amanda Trail.
Although there is a steady stream of visitors during his Friday afternoon shift, Stanley said people generally have a better idea of what to do now because of the internet and cell phones.
“It used to be that I’d be here until 6:30 trying to shoo people out … that doesn’t happen anymore,” Stanley said.
And then the phone is there to answer. Stanley recalls his two oddest calls.
One came from a bride-to-be wondering if the center could arrange to have a sea captain officiate her wedding — the next day.
And then there was the man who called asking Stanley “How do you pronounce your town’s name?”
“Yah-hots,” Stanley replied.
“No it isn’t,” the man insisted.
Labor Day weekend events in Yachats:
Saturday, Sunday and Monday: Yachats Arts Guild fall show and sale goes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for three days in the Yachats Commons.
Saturday: Yachats Ladies Club Pie and Ice Cream Social, 11 a.m. The last pie sale of the summer season will be at the Yachats Ladies Club, 286 W. Third St. Slices of homemade pie for $4; add a scoop of ice cream for $1. Open until the pie is gone.
Sunday: Yachats Lions Club all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast, 7:30 to 11 a.m. at the Lions Club Hall on West Fourth Street. $7 donation.
Sunday: Yachats Farmers Market, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on West Fourth Street and in parking lot west of the Yachats Commons.