San Juan Islands Destination Management Plan

The gap analysis work was carried out over the winter, and we are now drafting the plan and working with consultants on the document layout and design.

In preparing to create the plan document, we’ve reviewed other destinations’ plans, especially those facing similar challenges from tourism. The focus for our document will be measurable goals with meaningful actions.

We anticipate sharing a draft plan for public review in June, which we will then bring to the County Council in July. This working draft will set the stage to begin guiding investments and implementing management strategies. We will carry out additional outreach and complete thoughtful consultation with Tribes, to ensure the plan is meaningful and equitable for all, before presenting a final draft to Council for adoption.

After the community engagement sessions, we met with County Departments and partners over the summer to build out implementation details. This included: who needs to be involved, data gaps, performance metrics, timeline, and funding needs. Our master database was updated and developed further, including tracking the crossover with other planning efforts mentioned earlier.

We are engaging our consultants to do a deeper dive in a couple of key analysis areas:

- Capacity Analysis: the need to identify specific capacity levels or a methodology for doing so to help retain quality of experience and avoid overbuilding of infrastructure.

- Framework to support local purveyors: developing an identity as a niche destination in support of local operators. The aim is both to support local businesses and to expand and elevate good stewardship practices.

Meanwhile, we encourage additional online written comments from interested individuals, businesses, or organizations so we can continue to hear from the widest variety of voices. Please email us at tourism@sanjuanco.com to share your thoughts.

A big thanks to all the community members who participated in our public engagement sessions this April and May for the Sustainable Tourism Management Plan. We were inspired by your engagement and commitment to our community and environment.

A summary report of the engagement sessions has been created and may be viewed here.

We have synthesized the outcomes and recommendations from the meetings, and now are identifying and planning for the additional analyses needed to construct the plan. The situational analysis work will be conducted this fall, and plan drafting will begin in early January with that data. We will look forward to sharing a draft plan for review in Spring 2023.

Meeting #3 | 5:30 - 7:30 pm
May 17: San Juan | May 18: Orcas | May 19: Lopez

Thank you to all who have participated in our community meeting series! We are very grateful for all the feedback we've received.

At Meeting #3, we reviewed strategies and shared a list of all-island, and island-specific actions identified at Meeting #2. We conducted a prioritization activity for each strategies' actions to gauge what actions were rising to the top. We ended with a full group discussion for new action ideas and to review the groupings from the prioritization activity.

Meeting 3 Summary
Slide deck
Action list for prioritization activity at Meeting 3

Recording links

• San Juan Island: https://youtu.be/QzP1MR6Mlps
• Orcas Island: https://youtu.be/uDKpsKd_nOE
• Lopez Island: https://youtu.be/ta1miBZWc8w

Meeting #2 | 5:30 - 7:30 pm
May 10: San Juan | May 11: Orcas | May 12: Lopez

Thank you for all your feedback and ideas shared in Meeting #2 of this series. We appreciate you all spending your weekday evenings with us!

During Meeting #2, we presented updated vision and goal elements based on community input from Meeting 1. We presented strategy examples and options, as well as case studies from other places that we can draw inspiration from based on their solutions. We held small group discussions where participants reacted to example strategies and brainstormed new strategies and actions for the STMP.

Meeting 2 Summary
Slide deck
Recording links

• San Juan Island: https://youtu.be/pyWhQ0_wkHE
• Orcas Island: https://youtu.be/fFBAjW5i_WU
• Lopez Island: https://youtu.be/XxBOPnESnCg

Meeting #1 | 5:30 - 7:30 pm
April 28: All Islands

Thank you to all who participated in our first meeting! We discussed what is an STMP, what is the intention and vision of this planning process, previous work, plan timeline, and discussed in groups goal elements for the STMP. Please see below for Meeting #1 materials.

Meeting 1 Summary
Slide deck
Recording link: https://youtu.be/xxJJyM16cSE

San Juan County is working to develop a Sustainable Tourism Management Plan (STMP) that outlines the shared community vision, goals, and implementation measures to drive sustainable tourism in the San Juan Islands.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Public participation is vital to ensuring that the STMP reflects the priorities and concerns of our community. We’ll be launching a series of community meetings to gather input starting April 28 - RSVP here!

All meetings will be virtual, from 5:30-7:30 pm, and take place on Zoom. Click here to register!

Meeting 1
April 28 - All Islands

Meeting 2
May 10 - San Juan
May 11 - Orcas
May 12 - Lopez

Meeting 3
May 17 - San Juan
May 18 - Orcas
May 19 - Lopez

Your participation will help us create a clear path forward to address concerns such as:

* Preserving natural resources and the rural lifestyle.

* Maintaining and reimagining infrastructure.

* Supporting a year-round community and economy.

Visit our informational website and learn more about the project background and the current process.

Submit feedback on our survey to share your input on what should be included in the STMP or your thoughts on the planning process.

San Juan County and National Park Service worked in cooperation with the San Juan Islands Terrestrial Managers Group to conduct a series of surveys, asking a sample of visitors, residents and businesses on the islands about tourism issues. These surveys provided a unique opportunity for the public to help government officials make good tourism decisions which would maximize benefits and minimize impacts.

2017 San Juan Islands Visitors Study

San Juan County, the National Park Service, and the Terrestrial Managers Group worked cooperatively with Confluence on a multifaceted Visitor Study in 2017 (published February 2018). The study had several components as listed below. This is the primary document for learning about visitors to the San Juan Islands, as well as background information about visitation levels and the accommodation options they use. The study is pre-pandemic, so some visitation trends may be dated.

• Onsite survey: This element surveyed people at visitor sites or park units. It provides information about evaluations of crowding and facilities, and profiles visitors and residents that used these sites.

• Ferry survey: This element surveyed people waiting for ferries to Anacortes (mostly visitors, but some residents). It provided more complete profiles of respondent characteristics, their recreation participation, the attractions they visited, reasons for visiting, evaluations of use densities at beach and marine viewing areas, and support for management actions.

• Accommodation inventory: This element reviewed the numbers and types of overnight accommodations used by visitors, and then compared them with visitation estimates. It includes discussion of Vacation Rentals and use of vacant or second homes.

• Visitation analysis: This element described patterns and trends of visitation numbers from Washington State and other ferries, cruise ships, airlines and charters, and private boats.

• Counts and distributions: This element provided site-specific use information at visitor sites, park units, or along road segments.
  
  

2019 Tourism and Visitor Management in the San Juan Islands

In 2019, San Juan County and the National Park Service worked cooperatively with the same group of agencies and Confluence to conduct additional studies (published January 2020). These included several reports as listed below. The resident and business survey reports provide parallel information to the 2017 ferry survey and is probably the most relevant for tourism planning, but the survey of all-island boaters and remote island boaters provides useful information for those visitor sectors.

• Part 1: Survey of residents and businesses: This report summarized profiles of residents and businesses, including length of residency and proportion who work on the islands. Profiles of businesses include estimates of tourism-related revenue. The bulk of the survey focused on parallel questions to the ferry survey (of visitors) about reasons for living/working on the islands, traffic and congestion, crowding at sites, sustainable tourism, capacity, specific management actions, ferry use, and targets for tourism promotion.

• Part 2: Survey of all-island boaters: This report focused on visiting boaters at the main marinas on the islands, and asked parallel questions to the visitor, resident, and business surveys of this specialized type of visitor, including reasons for visiting, onshore activities, crowding at sites, sustainable tourism, capacity, specific management actions, and Orca whale management issues.

• Part 3: Survey of remote island boaters: This report focused on boaters that visited select remote islands and offered additional information about these boaters. It included some parallel questions to the visitor survey about reasons for visiting and evaluations of crowding, with other questions similar to the 2017 onsite surveys about evaluating conditions and facilities on remote islands, as well as specific management actions for those islands.

• Part 4: Conclusions and recommendations: This report is perhaps the most useful of all the Confluence-prepared documents; it summarizes major findings and puts them in context for future tourism and natural resource planning. For readers looking to minimize their homework for the tourism plan, this shorter document is a good place to start. It includes several broad conclusions about what previous studies described, as well as a starting list of specific management actions (organized by island and for all islands) that might be considered in a Sustainable Tourism Master Plan.

2017 Visitor Management Assessment

This February 2017 report summarized an Oct 2016 workshop among agencies and stakeholders about SJI recreation and tourism issues. The workshop reviewed existing information, brainstormed and prioritized issues, and considered example management actions. Notable output from the workshop included initial analysis of existing information, long-term visitation trends, recreation impacts, and visitor management “hot spots.” The document included descriptions of information gaps and some study options to fill those gaps (which were later addressed with the 2017 and 2019 studies).

It is reassuring to know there are many other communities that share similarities to ours and have invested in strategies and projects we might want to consider here. We can learn from what worked and what didn’t, and we can pick and choose, like an a la carte menu, what to implement and adapt.

The two examples here are communities are similar to San Juan County in that they bring in visitors from near and far. And there are times of year the visitors outnumber the locals by many times.

• Destination Management Case Studies powerpoint

• List of example case studies for tourism management