How well is Whatcom County’s tourism industry recovering from the COVID pandemic?

Travel spending in Whatcom County nearly returned to pre-COVID levels in 2021 but didn’t make up for lost revenue in 2020 or a loss of momentum caused by the pandemic.

Tourism spending brought in a total of $527.4 million last year, according to a release by Visit Bellingham/Whatcom County, a non-profit organization that markets the region as a destination for visitors and businesses. That was a 38% increase from the $380.9 million in visitor spending in the area in 2020 and just 5% short of the $555.0 million in 2019.

The data included in the release was prepared by Tourism Economics for the State of Washington Tourism and Washington State Destination Marketing Organizations Association, and it tracked visitors to the region, their spending in five categories and industry jobs.

Even though the release expressed encouragement about the gains seen in 2021, Visit Bellingham/Whatcom County said “the increase doesn’t replace losses seen in 2020, or reach the level of projected growth before COVID.”

Before the pandemic, the county was seeing an annual increase of 4.7% in visitor spending per year, according to the release, which would have had it on track to exceed $600 million in 2021 before the pandemic put a damper on many people’s travel plans.

“These two deficits — real losses from 2020 and 2021 and lost momentum in growth — reveal the pandemic’s remaining scars as well as the growth opportunity for this year and future years’ visitor activities,” Travel Bellingham/Whatcom County said in the release.

Uneven recovery

Direct visitor spending in 2021 was broken down into five industry categories — accommodations, food and beverage, recreation, retail and transportation.

Money spent on accommodations in 2021 ($159.6 million) showed the most growth, as it was up 63% from the $98.1 million spent in 2020, according to the release. In fact, the county saw 16% more spent on accommodations in 2021 than it did before COVID in 2019 ($137.9 million).

Money spent last year in each of the other four categories — $136.6 million in food and beverage, $63.2 million in recreation, $100.4 million in retail and $67.5 million in transportation — was up at least 25% over 2020 numbers, but all four remained below 2019’s totals.

Jobs in Whatcom’s tourism and hospitality industry rebounded 12% in 2021 to 4,698, but that was 37% below the 7,443 jobs seen in 2019, according to the release.

“The jobs data tells the grimmest story and could be an element capping the recovery capacity for some sectors and fueling the uneven increases,” the release states.

Additional data from Tourism Economics showed the average overnight traveler staying in Whatcom County in 2021, including those who stayed with friends or family, spent $73. The average stay was found to be 3.8 days, meaning the average trip impact for one traveler was $277.

For an overnight traveling party, the per day impact was found to be $254 per day, meaning their average trip had an impact of $965.

“When you consider an industry in our county that directly causes over half a billion dollars of spending, it is clearly so vital,” Visit Bellingham/Whatcom County CEO Sandy Ward said in the release. “But when we put our work at that personal level, the fact that each family or group of tourists that visits spends almost $1,000 during their stay, it makes our jobs clear. ...

“Framed in another way, the taxes generated from visitor spending save each Whatcom County household $567.50 per year, so visitors and our work are subsidizing the quality of life of our friends and neighbors throughout Whatcom County.”