Utah tourism board: National park fee hike bad for business

By Brice Wallace

The Utah tourism board is pushing back against a National Park Service proposal to increase fees at 17 national parks, saying that it could unintentionally hurt certain commercial activities there.

The Utah Board of Tourism Development, during a recent meeting in St. George, approved a letter to the Park Service that points out several concerns about the proposed increase.

The Park Service has proposed fee hikes during peak seasons at 17 parks — from the current $30 per vehicle to $70, good for seven days — and revised fees for road-based commercial tours as a way to generate revenue for a backlog of park improvements. In Utah, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands and Zion national parks would be affected. Capital Reef would not.

{mprestriction ids="1,3"}“This proposal will have significant impacts on commercial use operators and businesses who support private tours and guiding services in the parks,” the board’s letter states. “This creates a challenging environment for private businesses to continue to operate businesses that bring visitors to America’s national parks and will likely force longstanding businesses to change their business models or discontinue operations entirely. For international visitors, for whom the national parks are key motivators to travel to the United States, these fee increases create a deterrent for visiting the United States.”

“As individuals visiting the parks, many of us would be happy to pay the additional costs,” Jay Kinghorn, associate managing director of the Utah Office of Tourism, told the Governor’s Office of Economic Development at the board’s November meeting. “However, from a commercial perspective, from the businesses in the communities, we think there are significant unintended consequences.”

The board said it recognizes that park entrance fees are among the tools available to address the $11.3 billion backlog of infrastructure projects at national parks, but the fee increase would raise only $70 million annually, or 0.62 percent of the backlog. The backlog of projects in Utah’s national parks is $145 million. It is $70 million alone at Zion, which would see only $1.3 million a year through the fee increase.

The tourism board predicts that many people would opt for the $80 “America the Beautiful” annual passes rather than the seven-day, $70 passes. Revenues from annual passes go to the park where the annual pass is sold, resulting in other parks visited getting none and thus would have their overall fee revenues reduced, it said. Kinghorn said Zion would be able to keep 80 percent of the annual pass revenue, while Bryce would receive zero.

The tourism board is recommending that the Park Service review its draft proposal. It calls for demand pricing for peak periods of the day to increase revenues and even out visitation; local fee structures for the different parks; increased flexibility for park superintendents to manage their budgets; enabling parks to hire staff with fee revenues; and a review of policy for fee-free days to redistribute visitation from holidays, when the parks are already overcrowded.

The proposal comes as national park visitation has risen while federal funding for parks has fallen. Zions’ visitation grew 60.6 percent from 2010-16 but its budget was reduced 3.7 percent.

The Park Service is accepting comments about the fee increase proposal until Nov. 23 in writing and at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/proposedpeakseasonfeerates. {/mprestriction}