From the Treasure Valley to Coeur d’Alene to Sun Valley to Lava Hot Springs and Bear Lake, there’s lots to do in Idaho — and local and state tourism officials are making sure people know about it.

ONLY 18 SUMMERS

The Idaho Department of Commerce’s main tourism campaign, “18 Summers,” urges parents to get outside with their kids because before they know it, their kids will be grown up and out of the house.

Matt Borud, chief marketing and innovation officer for the Idaho Department of Commerce, said “18 Summers” has been successful because of the emotions it invokes.

“I became a parent two years ago, and I can tell you the campaign has made me a better father,” Borud said. “I do not want to waste an opportunity to go adventuring with my daughter. It has quantified time. It truly makes you think, ‘I only have 16 summers left with my 2-year-old daughter and the time that we get now is going to be different than the time we get a few years down the road when maybe she’s going to basketball camps or she’s doing something else in her life and she isn’t interested in going camping with dad.’ It truly hits home on a personal level that you only have so much time with your kids, that these opportunities for them to adventure and explore do as much for them as they do for you.”

Summer vacations are happy memories, so they stick with kids more than other aspects of their lives, Borud said.

“Family vacations have a real psychological effect. They stay in your memory because of the positives,” Borud said. “You’re relaxed. You maybe see your parents in a bit of a different light. You go on an adventure. You experience something you’ve never experienced before, that you haven’t experienced since. You just remember it. It’s a different family interaction on vacation, and we really wanted to tap into that vein with the messaging. And it really aligns nicely with our product. We want folks to adventure in the outdoors. We want kids to get outside, get off your devices, go for a hike, go for a mountain bike ride, learn how to fish, do this kind of stuff because it is so important and so enriching to the soul.”

The Idaho Department of Commerce starts the campaign in February and keeps it going until late in the summer. The department advertises throughout the West, and the campaign has been well received since it launched four years ago.

“We’re still very proud of (‘18 Summers’),” Borud said. “Research has shown us that we haven’t nearly saturated the message yet. It’s still resonating with people and there are still a lot of folks who are seeing it for the first few times. It’s a great message. We love the brand. It’s work we’re very proud of, and a message that we’re going to continue to promote for a while longer.”

BIG GROWTH

Statewide, tourism in Idaho is growing every year. Across the state, tourism is up over 11 percent this year from the previous year, continuing a trend of 12 and 13 percent increases the previous two years before that, according to Borud. That percentage is measured by how much revenue the state makes through its lodging tax. In 2017, Idaho had approximately 3.15 million travelers, Borud said. In 2015, that number was 2.75 million.

“We’ve had a really strong growth rate over the last few years,” Borud said. “We expect to still be in that double-digit growth going into this summer.”

Borud said people are primarily coming to Idaho to visit friends and family but that there has been an uptick in people visiting the state just to see the sights.

Birgitta Bright, the tourism administrator for Visit Pocatello, which promotes tourism in Pocatello and Chubbuck, said the numbers in the Gate City area are “steadily increasing” as well.

“This year it seems like we’re about even with what we were before,” Bright said. “It’s still an 11 percent or 12 percent increase (in lodging tax revenues) from the year before, which is what we were the year before that.”

According to statistics provided by Bright, visitors spent $238 million in Southeast Idaho in 2014, and the tourism industry in Southeast Idaho provides 3,400 jobs. Tourism is also Idaho’s third largest industry behind agriculture and technology.

WHAT’S BRINGING PEOPLE TO THE AREA?

Both Bright and Borud said one of the biggest driving factors bringing people to Idaho and Southeast Idaho in general is the outdoors.

“Whether it’s just a blanket sense of visiting the outdoors or it’s visiting state parks or monuments or recreation areas,” Borud said. “There’s always a driver around water, and then just outdoor adventures, so biking and things along those lines. It really is driven by the outdoor product and outdoor activities.”

For a lot of Pocatellans, access to the outdoors is just right outside of their homes.

“One of things that we have going in Pocatello, that a lot of people who live here just don’t realize, is we have excellent access to the outdoors,” Bright said. “Sometimes we take it for granted. Some people don’t. You can be in Old Town grabbing a bite to eat or browsing antiques and then you can jump up onto trails within 10 minutes.”

Bright said people from out of state are hearing about Pocatello because of those unique outdoor features.

“People are hearing about us and want to come here,” Bright said. “They like the quality of life that we have here with the easy access to the outdoors.”

Bright said Pocatello’s biggest tourist attraction is something that’s very family friendly.

“Our biggest tourist attraction that a lot of Pocatellans and people in Chubbuck have not taken advantage of is the Museum of Clean,” Bright said. “It’s the No. 1 tourist destination on TripAdvisor for Pocatello. We get a lot of people stopping through just to go there.”

The Museum of Clean has exhibits on historic cleaning techniques and tools, with brooms, tubs, toilets and more.

The Bannock County Historical Museum, the Fort Hall Replica and the Idaho Museum of Natural History are also high on the list tourist destinations in the Gate City. Bright also said Chubbuck’s new splash pad and the weekly movies in the park, both at Stuart Park in the summer, are big hits.

In addition, Pocatello is only a couple hours from Yellowstone National Park, and visitation numbers for the park are continuing to soar. According to numbers provided by Bright, more than 4.1 million travelers visited Yellowstone Park in 2017, and 35 percent of those visitors entered through the west gate and 17 percent used the south gate, the entrances most used by those coming from Pocatello. That means that more than 2 million of those visitors came through the Gate City.

Those big numbers are something Bright said her organization is trying to take advantage of.

“We do a lot of advertising to encourage people that as they’re planning their trip to Yellowstone to stop in Pocatello for a few days or stay in Pocatello and explore some other things in Southeast Idaho on your way up there,” Bright said. “The journey is the best part of the trip, not just the destination.”

Another big Pocatello tourist attraction, Zoo Idaho, is also remodeling and expanding. Bright says that it’s a great place for people to see all the animals they missed in Yellowstone.

“One of the things that we market is we tell people, ‘When you’re going to Yellowstone and you don’t get to see the animals because it’s too crowded, you can come to our zoo because we’re all indigenous species and you can see the Yellowstone animals up close at Zoo Idaho,’” Bright said.

Pebble Creek Ski Area is another location that brings people to Pocatello.

“The trend right now is to visit the smaller ski hills,” Bright said. “So (visitors are) finding these little gems like Pebble Creek where you can come and ski for a really affordable lift ticket and then they also don’t have to wait in line so they can get a lot more runs in.”

Bright thinks Pocatello has a lot to offer tourists and locals alike.

“Our Old Town is just really vibrant and has so many events going,” Bright said. “... Between art galleries and antiquing, and then we’ve got such great diversity in our restaurants. Old Town has the concerts all summer long (Revive@5). They have the (Portneuf Valley) Farmers Market. ISU has (Summer Soundwaves) concerts all summer long on Thursday nights on the Quad, which are amazing. They also have the (Pocatello Municipal Band) bandshell concerts at Ross Park.”

WILL GAS PRICES AFFECT TRAVEL?

Gas prices this summer are higher than they have been for a couple years, and Borud is worried about how it will affect the state’s tourism industry.

“It is very much a concern,” Borud said. “Idaho is a drive market. We define the geography of our traveler as within an uncomplicated day’s travel. For us that means a direct flight or an eight-hour drive. Seventy-eight percent of Idaho travelers travel in their own car, truck, their own vehicle. … You hope that other macroeconomic factors still stay in our favor. By that I mean, the statewide unemployment rate is under 3 percent, so hopefully folks are still employed and wages are rising and people can kind of withstand that little extra at the pump and still take those trips.”

Bright, however, said it shouldn’t have much effect on the amount of tourists — just where they’re coming from. She calls high gas prices “one-tank gas prices.”

“(High gas prices) shift the kinds of travel that people do,” Bright said. “When gas prices are cheap, (someone from Pocatello) might be planning a trip to California. But when gas prices are high, they might only go to Salt Lake instead. Where we’ve got this huge market right there in Salt Lake, we have that advantage that people can plan trips up here. … I think people travel closer to home when gas is a little higher.”

One side effect of people staying closer to home, according to Borud, is that the more rural communities will see some tourism as well.

“As more folks from some of our larger communities do get out and venture into their own backyard, travel with their families, that really benefits some of our more rural smaller communities,” Borud said.

Bright said she is optimistic about the future of tourism in the Pocatello area.

“I love Pocatello,” she said. “I think it’s a fantastic place to live, and I love sharing it with other people.”