Glacier visitor spending tops $250M

Hundreds of millions of dollars was funneled into the local economy last year as Glacier National Park set yet another high mark for visitation, according to new numbers from the National Park Service. Visitors to Glacier Park spent a record-breaking $250.8 million locally, a more than 25 percent increase over the previous year.

Eco-tourism is proving to be big business for Montana and across the nation, as the Glacier region wasn’t the only park to see these record numbers. The 417 National Park Service sites nationwide last year recorded a total of 331 million visitors, contributing $34.9 billion to the U.S. economy.

The report issued by the Interior Department last week looked at visitor spending in communities near park service land and used regional economic multipliers to estimate the contribution.

“In my own hometown of Whitefish, I saw how the popularity of Glacier National Park led to growth of the local outdoor rec and eco-tourism industry,” Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke commented on the report. “And while traveling to Sequoia and Kings Canyon last week it was exciting to see tourism towns dotting the road to the park. This report is a testament to the tangible economic benefits our parks bring to communities across the nation.”

More than $547 million was spent by travelers to Montana’s national parks last year, and about half of that came in the Glacier region.

Yellowstone National Park visitor spending in 2016, by comparison, brought in about $680 million to the park’s gateway communities in Wyoming and Montana. That’s about $42 million more than 2015 and $100 million more than in 2014. The top two direct visitor spending locations in the U.S. were Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Yellowstone came in at sixth.

Racene Friede, executive director for Glacier Country Tourism, said the tourism organization which represents eight counties in northwestern Montana, heard strong reports of increased visitor spending through both the communities and businesses near Glacier.

“These travelers spent an estimated $250.8 million in local gateway regions which, Glacier Country Tourism feels, contributes to not just the rest of our region but to the entire state. Most of these visitors traveled to and through many parts of Big Sky Country,” Friede said.

“Tourism is the second largest industry in Montana and I expect another strong year,” she added about 2017 projections.

Norma Nickerson, director of the Institute for Travel and Recreational Research at the University of Montana, agreed that 2017 looks to be another record year.

“The tourism outlook for the year is still looking positive and probably will see about a 2 percent increase in visitation,” Nickerson said. “With that said, however, there are caveats.”

The U.S. dollar is still strong, meaning Canadian visitation is unlikely to increase, along with overseas travelers to the U.S. and Montana, Nickerson said.

“At the U.S. level, there is much concern about what influence the proposed travel ban had on overseas visitors’ perception of safely and easily coming and leaving our country,” she said. “Much is still unknown in terms of international travel.”

Nickerson said that a variety of factors led to last year’s record visitation, one of the largest being that 2016 was the centennial for the National Park Service. To celebrate the 100 year anniversary, the park systems created the “Find Your Park” campaign to encourage more people to visit the national parks.

Nickerson added that increased visitation wasn’t exclusive to the summer season.

“In Glacier the biking opportunity was fantastic last year and people came to bike when no cars were on the road” during the shoulder season, she said.

Although more money is being added to the local economy through increased visitor spending, not all the effects of increased visitation numbers are positive, Nickerson said, noting that overcrowding is an increasing problem, with more instances of out-of-bounds camping, property damage, wildlife damage and other issues.

In an article earlier this spring, Nickerson wrote that while overcrowding is a concern, there are solutions.

“In unique places, like Yellowstone and Glacier, it is not possible to increase the number of geysers or expand Going-to-the-Sun Road. One cannot control where and when grizzly bears hang out by the roadway. Visitors are here to see that bear and get their wildlife photo,” she wrote.

“However, some solutions to sufficient space for activities such as wildlife watching would be to highlight areas outside the national parks that have equal wildlife opportunities, such as the National Bison Range, the multitude of wildlife refuges including the C.M. Russell Wildlife Refuge and various other hot spots within Montana.”

To view the full report visit https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/vse.htm.

Reporter Alyssa Gray may be reached at 758-4433 or agray@dailyinterlake.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.