To boost local tourism and draw more visitors to the community, the Prineville-Crook County Chamber of Commerce is utilizing help from a Travel Oregon program.
“It’s a different grant,” explained Chamber Director Kim Daniels. “It’s not like we’re getting money to build something or create something tangible. It’s more of consulting and project management, so then we can go forward to maybe spend the money on something more tangible. They do help us in finding grant funds as well.”
Travel Oregon oversees destination management for communities throughout the state. Daniels explained that the Chamber serves as the “destination management organization” for Prineville. The Chamber is under the Visit Central Oregon umbrella, which provides the same service for the region. That regional organization is then served by the Travel Oregon.
Daniels said the program is designed to provide local tourism leaders marketing ideas that may not occur to people within the community.
“They provide support and consulting and then help the Chamber come up with some funding options, so that they can complete projects and market the area outside of Central Oregon to people,” Daniels said.
Perhaps Travel Oregon could market fly fishing the Crooked River or visiting the Barnes Butte Recreation Area, she offered as examples.
“Is it going to be trying to get more people come around up to the rodeo?” Daniels said. “I don’t know. We’ll find out, I mean there’s a lot of the nice thing is, we have so many things in this town that we can focus on and different ways to do it, so that will be the interesting part, to see what they think we’re missing out on getting the public information about.”
The Chamber is no stranger to working with Travel Oregon to enhance tourism. Earlier this year, the organization was awarded grant funding to improve cycling in Crook County. In addition, the state organization promotes Prineville and Crook County with information on the Travel Oregon website, which people visit to figure out where they want to visit in Oregon.
“So, there’s always been a relationship and there’s always been a connection,” Daniels said. “They have grant cycles quite often…That’s not a new thing.”
Then, from March until June, the process will shift to project proposal development. During this phase, local leadership will have direct support from consultants to develop competitive funding proposals based on assessment results.
“Our goal is to continue to try and get people to explore and discover Crook County and everything we have to offer,” Daniels concluded.
