Wildfire smoke hurts Oregon tourism

Add Axios as your preferred source to Smoke and evacuations forced Mount Hood Meadows to cancel all its summer operations last month. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images Longer periods of wildfire smoke are costing Oregon communities thousands in lost tourism revenue. Why it matters: More smoke could reshape where and when people vacation in Oregon during the summer, a new Oregon State University analysis warns. Zoom in: Todd Montgomery, director of OSU's Sustainable Tourism Lab, compared Air Quality Index measurements with lodging data from the Bend Visitors Bureau from 2021 to 2025 to see how smoke affected summer travel. By the numbers: Short-lived smoke events had little impact on hotel bookings, Montgomery told Axios, but longer periods of poor air quality caused sizable losses.

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