Yachats chamber unveils new tourist-focused website asking visitors to “Discover Slow Travel”

By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle

YACHATS – A new and all encompassing website promoting Yachats and the surrounding area launched on New Year’s Day.

While the site is rich with vibrant photography and captivating video meant to entice visitors to the area, it also offers lots of information and detail that long-time locals could find informative and useful.

“I love it,” said Yachats Area Chamber of Commerce director Nichole Lippincott. “It’s so beautiful and so easy to use. The biggest thing behind this new website is making it people friendly. Our other website was a little clunky. This one turned out really nicely. It’s really smooth and very simple but also has a lot of depth.”

Lippincott will manage the new tourism-based site while also continuing with the chamber’s website.

Easy to use menus on the new www.visityachats.org site cover everything from local lodging and camping options, dining and shopping, health and wellness, outdoor adventure destinations with detailed descriptions for planning, festivals, events and history.

The featured video on the website, with the tagline “Discover Slow Travel,” begins with community leader Joanne Kittel pronouncing the Indigenous people’s name for the area.

“Ya’Xaik,” Kittel says. “It’s the only known name of southern Alsea villages and the origin of the name Yachats.”

The name means “To go to the end of the road.”

Ethereal music plays as the video continues and locals give their one-word descriptions of Yachats – community, mindful, charming, inclusive, family, enchanting, magical, quirky, foresty, authentic, sanctuary, ocean, compassion, serene and village.

“It’s so cool,” Lippincott said of the video. “It actually makes me cry every time I watch it. It’s so sweet.”

The new site was created by Verdant &, a marketing company founded by Yachats resident Amara DePaul, who the city in conjunction with the chamber hired last spring to promote Yachats.

The overall cost of the website was close to $15,000, which came through the city’s marketing contract with the chamber. The city provided $261,000 in 2025 to the chamber from its visitor amenity funds to promote the city, its businesses, events and festivals.

A rolling scroll on the new site transforms from “Slow by nature” to “Wild by nature” and then “Soulful by nature” and “Magic by Nature.”

The “Slow by nature” tagline was one of several suggested by Verdant & that Lippincott along with city manager Bobbi Price settled on.

“I think that slow travel is kind of this big thing happening right now,” Lippincott said. “Discover slow travel is like slow down and I think Yachats fits that perfectly. It’s trying to show Yachats in a different light – to bring people here so they can just slow down and be out of the city and immersed in nature.”

Encouraging visitors to stop off in Yachats is important to the city’s economy – which relies heavily on tourist dollars to fund infrastructure and other amenities.

“But bringing people here and also educating and showing them that they can love and be a part of nature is huge and I think that’s what this whole marketing plan is about,” Lippincott said. “And not just visiting and taking, but coming and being a part of the community and being present is the theme behind this new website and all the new campaigns we’re going to be coming out with in the next five years.”

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]