Glacier is primary draw for two-park visitors

Glacier National Park is the primary draw among tourists who come to Montana to visit both of the state's big national parks.

That's one of the conclusions of a new report on travel patterns by tourists who visit both Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. The study was conducted by the University of Montana's Institute of Tourism and Recreation Research and funded by the Montana bed tax.

Norma Nickerson, Keith Bosak and Kyla Zaret collected data from a nonresident visitor survey in 2005 and created about 160 useable maps for their analysis. About 10 percent of all nonresident visitors in Montana visit both parks in one trip.

The most traveled route for two-park visitors was Interstate 90 from Bozeman to Missoula and U.S. 93 from Missoula to the gateway communities of the Flathead. A secondary route ran through Helena and along the Rocky Mountain Front. Few two-park visitors traveled in the central and eastern portions of Montana.

Two travel patterns emerged from the authors' study. The "open loop" is a circular pattern with different routes between the national parks. The "linear" pattern is either north-south or east-west, and tourists retraced their route on their return trip.

Open-loop travelers were more likely to have children under-18, originate from Colorado and spend about 1.6 more nights in Montana. Linear travelers were more likely to have travelers over 55 years of age, originate in California or foreign countries, be couples and camp in developed areas.

Either way, Glacier Park tended to be their primary draw. The authors noted, however, that when visitors come to Montana to see just one national park, they say their main attraction is Yellowstone.

The authors also discovered an exception to "distance decay" theory, which states that interest in a destination peaks at some distance relatively close to a source market and then drops exponentially as distance increases. Travelers who visited both national parks, however, did not come from nearby markets but originated from across the U.S. and foreign countries.

"This confounds the marketing efforts of a state like Montana, since it would be much easier to concentrate on marketing in certain geographic locations," the authors said. "It appears that visitors to both Glacier and Yellowstone national parks are not bound by their geographic origin. Instead, in terms of marketing Montana to nonresidents, their interests in national parks and wilderness-type settings are better indicators of likeliness to visit than place of residence."

The authors recommend marketers in Montana's tourist industry provide more route suggestions to potential visitors.

They also suggested that if a two-park visitor center is ever built, it should be located somewhere between Bozeman and Missoula, where the majority of travelers are located.