At some stage in Kush Tourism’s signature 1/2-day tour Travel Knowledge of Seattle-location marijuana businesses, guests admire leafy green flowers at a growing facility and forestall at a retail store wherein everybody can legally purchase over the age of 21 much as an ounce of marijuana.
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Kush proprietor Michael Gordon, who released his enterprise in January 2014, describes his tours as instructional experiences that offer an at the back-of-the-scenes view of a budding enterprise. Visit Seattle’s VP of communications, David Blanford, agrees. “I’ve taken the excursion, and I found it captivating,” Blanford said. “It is educational. I discovered plenty, and I assume it’s nicely achieved.” In August, Kush became the primary marijuana-focused enterprise to enroll in Visit Seattle as a constrained member. At the same time, as Kush cannot put it on the market in Visit Seattle’s published guides or its website, its brochure is to be had at vacationer facts facilities, wherein travelers interested in a marijuana excursion can analyze more.
But, working with organizations like Kush — and promoting something associated with leisure marijuana — poses challenges for destination management businesses in states like Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, in which cannabis has been legalized. Because leisure cannabis isn’t always legal nationwide — in truth, it technically stays unlawful in all states on the federal degree — selling the drug or businesses associated with it to out-of-state traffic puts destination advertising companies at risk of breaking federal regulation.
“We’ve surely been very devoted to being an aid and answering questions and supporting travelers apprehend the law,” Blanford said. “advertising to [tourists] is simply untimely for us. It isn’t easy to work thru the federal interpretation of promoting. It’s a completely sticky difficulty.” The question of to what quantity pot is truly driving tourism is likewise a point of dialogue. Little facts are to quantify the extent of interest in cannabis amongst site visitors to states in which it’s now criminal, and in some instances, it’s too soon to recognize.
While Colorado has visible file visitation for the reason that kingdom legalized the recreational use of marijuana, that boom actually had started by the time pot changed into capable of hit the market. Research performed in April through Strategic advertising & Studies Insights for the Colorado Tourism Office located that for 64% of site visitors, marijuana did not affect the selection to Go to Colorado. When they arrived, 11% of vacationers age 25 and over stopped via a dispensary. Fourteen percent said a bad impact, though they nonetheless visited the country, and 23% affirmed it affected their tour choice.
While Blanford said he did now not get the sense that vacationers are coming to Seattle purely to partake in recreational marijuana, visitors are asking questions about utilization and availability at data booths and motels.
Answering the one’s questions has come to be elaborate in all the locations wherein pot is legal.
“The law says these are products which are a felony to own, to buy and to use, but it doesn’t designate an area wherein nonresidents can legally use the goods,” stated Paul Armentano, deputy director of the pot advocacy organization Normal (the Countrywide Business enterprise for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). The want for solutions about pot tourism is best probable to develop.
Further to Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, legalizing recreational marijuana use is the subject of a statewide September referendum in California, in which polls endorse it’s going to pass without problems. (California already has us off as most lenient clinical marijuana Legal guidelines.)
