Board Of County Commissioners

How Does Tourism Impact Chelan County?

Chelan County’s public lands, natural beauty, four distinct seasons and numerous tourism assets draw visitors year-round. With a residential population of about 80,000, the county drew nearly 2.6 million overnight visitors from the nearby region, surrounding states and across the world in 2024. From 2019 to 2024, annual visitorship grew 6 percent throughout the county. Each of the studied cities, including Chelan, Leavenworth, Wenatchee, Cashmere, and Manson, saw consistent summer visitors peaks and only some of these cities saw winter visitor peaks. Most visitors come from within Washington State.

Given this influx of people and their desire to experience everything Chelan County has to offer, it’s clear that the tourism industry has significant impacts on Chelan County.

From November 2024 through December 2025, Chelan County and its consultant conducted a study, paid for with lodging tax funds. The study provides a comprehensive and objective review of both the positive and negative impacts of tourism in Chelan County, including consideration of economic, fiscal, sociocultural, environmental, and community impacts. It outlines several recommendations that the county should consider to capitalize on the positive and minimize the negative aspects of tourism.

The study included an online survey that gathered 760 responses from local residents and businesses. Survey respondents prioritized infrastructure investments in habitat restoration and protection of the natural environment (55 percent), workforce housing (52 percent), and roads and parking in high traffic areas (50 percent), over additional infrastructure, public transit, or wayfinding.

The study’s 135-page report is available online in PDF form. The report also has been put into an online StoryMap for easy viewing and sharing of its findings.

Conclusions of Report

Tourism is deeply intertwined with all aspects of life in Chelan County. Out-of-area visitors come from elsewhere in Washington and all over the world to experience what Chelan County has to offer. This visitation generates complex and nuanced impacts that cannot easily be deemed net positive or net negative.

• Tourism contributes significantly to Chelan County's economy, supporting local businesses and creating employment opportunities. Tourism-serving businesses also provide amenities for Chelan County residents, including more shopping and dining options than could otherwise be supported by the local population.
• This spending generates tax revenues that support the provision of municipal services and infrastructure by Chelan County and its cities and towns. Tourism volumes also increase the demand for services and contribute to the wear and tear on that infrastructure.
• Impacts on housing availability and affordability are difficult to parse. While it is true that housing affordability is a challenge, that is true in nearly every community statewide, and challenges cannot be directly attributed to tourism.
• Impacts to Chelan County's natural environment are more likely to be negative. High volume destinations such as the Enchantments and seasonal hot spots like the Wenatchee River and surrounding foothills are exhibiting evidence of overuse.
• Tourism creates both opportunities and frustrations for county residents. Residents appreciate the amenities supported by the tourism trade and often enjoy interactions with a diverse visiting population, but chafe at traffic, noise, and high prices that they attribute to outside visitors.

Summary of Recommendations

While it is important to fully separate the benefits of tourism from its downsides, many strategies can be deployed to accentuate the positives and mitigate the negatives. Opportunities exist for Chelan County and its cities, towns, community-based organizations, businesses, and residents to contribute to this effort by integrating these ideas in their plans, strategies, and daily lives.

*Recommendations with an asterisk may benefit from state policy changes or resources. These could be the focus of county legislative advocacy efforts.

Economic

• Consider strategies for diversifying the economy at a countywide and community-specific level to reduce structural dependence on hospitality.*
• Build regional workforce training capacity to help tourism employees build skills that allow them to advance or transition to other professional positions.*
• Continue to implement strategies for smoothing tourism peaks to support year-round activity for businesses, such as differential pricing, and incentives, less seasonal products and services, and non-peak season marketing and messaging.
• Study similarly sized cities who successfully accommodate high volumes of visitors in an urban environment, focusing on traffic management, waste control, and utilities.

Fiscal

• Continue to invest in amenities that benefit residents as well as tourists.
• Clearly communicate to the public how visitor tax dollars are invested in local services and infrastructure (e.g., highlighting community projects and transparent dispersion of tourism revenues).
• Implement cost-recovery strategies, particularly for costs that are isolated to the tourism economy (e.g., a boat rental fee to help cover water rescue costs).
• Housing
• Support the development of more housing for long-term renters, specifically apartment housing.*
• Allow short-term rentals in places unlikely to support long-term rentals. Areas with unique amenities and low rates of owner-occupancy are not likely to serve the housing needs of residents.
• Align county and city regulations to encourage more housing development within the cities and reduce housing development pressure in unincorporated Chelan County.

Natural Environment

• Increase monitoring of ongoing and estimated future countywide impacts of human use on natural resources.
• Manage natural resources to a sustainable level of use by encouraging more disperse geographic use to reduce visitation at high-impact locations.*
• Continue investment in additional staffing and infrastructure, including trailheads, sanitation facilities, and parking capacity.*
• Educate visitors and facilitate responsible access.
• Evaluate new funding options.*

Community and Cultural

• Continue to make efforts to smooth visitation patterns, spreading but not diminishing tourist volume over time and place.
• Make targeted investments to mitigate traffic and the impacts of overuse.
• Continue to invest in cultural amenities and events that serve both tourists and community members.
• Support identity-based tourism that reflects the region’s character and history.
• Expand tourist education and behavior campaigns to promote responsible tourism.

Posted: 02/12/2026 11:57 AM
Last Updated: 02/12/2026 12:14 PM