The Meadow Lakes Golf Course in Prineville on Wednesday.

PRINEVILLE — Move over, Bend, Sunriver and Sisters. Prineville wants to become a tourism destination, as well.

Bend has its outdoor recreation. Sisters has its folk and quilt festivals. And Sunriver has its resort setting. But Prineville officials say their city offers an equally enticing range of visitor attractions: wide-open spaces, gravel bike riding trails and a dark skies destination for stargazers.

Earlier this month, Wanderlust Tours took 17 people to Prineville for an evening of stargazing. Prineville Reservoir is home to an International Dark Sky Park. It’s not the first time the tour company organized a visit to Prineville, said Courtney Braun, co-owner of Wanderlust Tours.

“I’ve so enjoyed watching Prineville grow as a destination. With more dark skies diminishing across the county, we are seeing an increased demand for non-light-polluted areas,” Braun said. “People are craving the vastness and complexity that the night skies offer.”

Soon, the tour company hopes to offer overnight trips for night sky gazing, Ochoco Mountain hiking, and a visit to the Bowman Museum, she said.

“There’s so much out there and with less people,” Braun said.

“We’re hoping to create an itinerary that’s robust enough to get people to spend a whole weekend out there.”

A survey of Prineville residents in 2023 found that a majority of those surveyed believe the benefits of tourism outweigh the negatives, according to Explore Prineville, the newly formed destination marketing organization sponsored by the Prineville Chamber of Commerce.

“Honestly, I was surprised by the response,” said Kim Molnar, executive director of Explore Prineville. “We have a generation of people who are born and raised here and don’t want things to change. We need to protect our culture and our environment. We are not looking to overrun our community.

“Prineville is still pretty much a small town.”

Generating revenue and jobs

Tourism could bring new jobs as businesses develop to a support industry, such as coffee shops, accommodations, boutiques and restaurants. Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester sees tourism as a way to boost the economy of a city that once relied heavily on timber.

“As a city, our primary focus is creating family-wage jobs and supporting Prineville’s economic growth,” Forrester said. “We certainly value the role tourism plays in showcasing all our community has to offer.”

Tourists pay an 8.5% state lodging tax for any stay shorter than 30 days in Prineville. A portion of the funds collected by the visitor tax pays for tourism-related marketing and promotion and the rest pay for county services.

In 2022, 4.2 million people visited Central Oregon, according to the most recent report from Dean Runyan Associates Oregon Travel Impacts. Those visitors spent $1 billion dollars, according to Visit Central Oregon, the region’s destination marketing agency.

In 2021, the year data are most current, Prineville’s 228 hotel rooms and other visitor accommodations collected $380,000 in transient occupancy taxes. By comparison, the county collected $339,000, according to Travel Oregon.

Bend collected $14.6 million in transient occupancy taxes, according to Travel Oregon.

While the hotel room tax revenue is low in Prineville, tourism has been known as a leading economic driver for many communities in Oregon.

Current Oregon law calls for 70% of the transient occupancy taxes collected to be used to market a community and facilities, while the balance can be be added to a municipality’s general fund. Some cities, however, have a different equation for how room taxes are spent.

In Bend, for example, its transient room tax was in place before 2003 and the city gets the bulk, 64.5%, for the general fund and 35.4% goes to Visit Bend for tourism promotion and facilities, said Allie Gardner, Travel Oregon industry communications manager.

“Visit Central Oregon was encouraged to learn about the positive community sentiment from Prineville for welcoming visitors,” said Kristine McConnell, Visit Central Oregon vice president regional programs. “This speaks well to the work and messaging that Molnar and her team are doing at Explore Prineville for showing the value of tourism and its economic impact in their community and Central Oregon.”

The survey of 199 Crook County residents in 2023 showed that 72% of the community believed that Prineville could be positioned as a tourist destination. Some concerns raised by respondents included congestion, overcrowding and the affect on the environment. Armed with this information, a plan could be developed to market in way that would protect the community’s integrity, Molnar said.

“We have been looking at what would draw someone here in terms of travel,” Molnar said. “We’re doing a lot of background work. We’re asking the question of what draws people here and what they want to do.”

The results of the survey reflect a destination that is just developing, said Todd Montgomery, Oregon State University-Cascades hospitality management instructor and executive in residence.

“They’re in the early stage development of tourism and the community tends to have a lot of support,” Montgomery said. “There’s a lot of room to grow and a lot of opportunity. The survey also shows that the community is focused on developing economic opportunity.”

Places to go and see

Linda English, who with her husband, Kevin English, created an app for bicyclists who prefer to ride on gravel roads, said the U.S. Forest Service’s gravel roads offer some of the best bike riding experiences in Oregon.

“There’s no one on them,” said Linda English. “It’s incredible. There’s a lot of open space to ride. There’s wildflowers in the spring, antelope and wild mustangs.”

The more people come to Prineville, the more hotels will be built. With only 316 hotel rooms in the county, including Brasada Ranch, accommodations could pose a constraint on expanding tourism, Molnar said.

But Molnar believes that the more visitors who come and stay overnight, the more attractive it will be to new hotel properties looking to expand their reach. Currently two national hotel chains have properties in Prineville, she said.

“We have a mix of properties here,” Molnar said. “We also have RV sites and cabins to rent at the Prineville Reservoir state park.”