Yellowstone Park Visits Up 20% in May, 11% for 2009

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June 8, 2009 by RV Business Leave a Comment

geyserwatch_1 While Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is allowing free entry to national parks for three weekends this summer to boost visitation, it seems many park travelers already are heading back to at least one of the parks, Yellowstone National Park.

According to park officials, more than 260,000 people visited Yellowstone in May alone, a huge 20% increase from last year’s level. For the first five months of the year, nearly 360,000 people came through the park’s gates, a nearly 11% increase over the same period in 2008, according to the National Parks Traveler e-newsletter.

Park officials attribute the bullish visitation numbers to better spring weather and an indication that the country is moving out of its recession. It didn’t indicate if lodging offerings were a factor.

Visitation figures for the first five months of the year are also up compared to the five-year average of just over 340,000 visitors. It will be interesting to see whether the trend continues through the summer, as the weak U.S. dollar already is leading to higher oil prices, which in turn are pushing gasoline prices back toward $3 a gallon.

Most of the park is inaccessible by automobile during the winter and early spring. May represents the first month most major park roads are open to wheeled visitor traffic and when visitor services begin to reopen for the busy summer season.

The park’s East Entrance saw the greatest increase in visitation, up nearly 21% in May compared to the previous year. The West Entrance remains the park’s busiest, with nearly 115,000 visitors passing through the gate in May, up nearly 17% from 2008. The South and North entrances also showed impressive increases compared to last year’s levels.

Nice spring weather like the park experienced in May is typically reflected by stronger visitation numbers. An analysis of past visitation trends also indicates, park visitation typically rebounds as the country begins to pull out of an economic downturn.

The winter and spring seasons represent a small but important portion of the park’s annual visitation, which topped the 3 million mark the last two years. In comparison, as many people will visit the park during two weeks in July as typically enter during the entire first five months of the year.

Elsewhere, Grand Canyon and Yosemite national parks reported year-to-year declines in visitation through the first four months of 2009.

Concern about the economic consequences of decreased travel caused Interior Secretary Salazar to announce on June 2 that national park entrance fees would be waived during three summer weekends. At the same time, he revealed that several park concessionaires, including Aramark Parks and Resorts, Forever Resorts and Delaware North Companies, would be offering various summer discounts and giveaways.

A decline in park visitation can be expected to be accompanied by an increase in national park lodging vacancies. The National Park Service reported reductions in overnight lodging for Yosemite, Sequoia, Big Bend, and Zion of 11.4%, 9%, 8.3%, and 25.9%, respectively, for the first four months of 2009.

The decline wasn’t universal, however. The Grand Canyon lodges, Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley National Park, and Grant Grove in Kings Canyon National Park reported slight increases in stays during the same period. Still, the outlook is, at best, guarded with the approach of the prime visitation season for most parks.

In general, lodge concessionaires are finding advance reservations are down; in some cases, significantly. However, they seem to believe (or hope) that an unusually large number of families will be making last-minute travel decisions, and that overall occupancy will be better than indicated by advance reservations.