USA: Montana Tourism Grows Stronger

The state of Montana covers more than 94 million acres, but its tourism industry is built on 1,080,225 of them.

Given what happened in 2015, and what’s on tap in 2016, that should bode well for many of the state’s businesses that rely heavily on visitors, said Daniel Iverson, communications manager for the Montana Office of Tourism and Business Development.

Those 1,080,225 acres belong to all Americans, and come in the form of Glacier National Park (1,013,572 acres) and Yellowstone National Park (96 percent of which lies in Wyoming, but which has 66,653 acres — and three of its five entrances — in Montana).

Yellowstone smashed its record for visitation earlier this year, and is on course to cross 4 million visitors a year for the first time ever and post a 15- to 16-percent increase more than 2014. There were times this year when lines to get into the park were so long, rangers waived hundreds of vehicles through at a time without charging the entrance fee in an effort to keep traffic moving.

Glacier, meantime, broke a 31-year-old visitation record in 2014 when it welcomed more than 2.3 million people and is poised to erase that again in 2015.

The park is edging toward a second straight record despite a challenging summer that included wildfires inside its borders, smoke-filled skies and the 2 ½-week closure of a significant chunk of its most popular attraction — Going to the Sun Road — during the height of the season.

The two national parks are definitely our cornerstones. They’re front and center, montana focuses a lot of the promotional works we do on them.

Information from the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research indicate that more than half the out-of-state visitors to Montana visited Yellowstone while, and 40 percent visited Glacier.

They’re the top two attractions by a comfortable margin.

With the National Park Service celebrating its 100th birthday in 2016, the centennial could help draw more attention — and visitors — to parks, including the two in Montana.

“We’re talking with our partners about how to promote, and take advantage of, the centennial,” Iverson says. “We think the increase in visitation to the parks will continue.”

The two parks predate the National Park Service itself, and have already celebrated their own centennials — Glacier six years ago, and Yellowstone, America’s first national park, back in 1972. But the NPS centennial will draw national attention in 2016, and Montana could benefit.

Among the ideas being considered, is one that would promote various routes between the parks — and attractions along the way — that could benefit more than communities close to Yellowstone and Glacier.

The parks should help the 2016 tourism outlook for the state.

You might be surprised at some of the other things that could affect it.

Iverson says Norma Nickerson, the director of the Institute of Tourism and Recreation Research, has noted that 2016 is a presidential election year. She called it a “wild card” that could lead to caution among voters/tourists who are uncertain about how the election of certain candidates could affect the economy.

That uncertainty could affect their travel plans.

Fuel prices and economies in other nations figure in. Another variable is the weather, which will wind up playing a major role in whatever Montana’s final 2015 tourism numbers turn out to be.

A lot depends on the weather.

After a good snow year in 2014, Montana saw a 10 percent drop in the number of skiers in a drier, lighter-snow year in 2015. That lack of precipitation carried over into the summer and affected the wildfire season, a year after wildfires weren’t much of a factor.

The lack of snow and increase in wildfires was accompanied by a weakening of the Canadian dollar that also affected a very important part of Montana’s economy — visitors from the North.

Most of our visitors come in by road,there was 4.2 percent increase at our west, south and eastern borders.

But there was a 6.3 percent decrease in traffic coming into Montana from the Canadian border, and that hurts the economy in many places across the northern tier of the state, and as far south as Great Falls.

It’s really slowing up communities like Great Falls. With a weak Canadian dollar, “Essentially, (Canadians) can’t buy as much for their dollar as they used to be able to while in the United States.

Early figures for 2015 final figures won’t be available until early 2016 — indicated that in addition to the higher numbers of visitors entering by vehicle over Montana’s borders with Idaho, Wyoming and North and South Dakota, there was a 1.8 percent increased in air travel, and a 2.2 percent increase in the number of hotel and motel rooms sold.

Montana usually comes close to matching national projections for tourism,for 2016, the U.S. Travel Association is predicting a 2 percent increase in the number of trips taken, and a 2.3 percent increase in spending.

International visitors to Montana seem to be increasing, which is part of a national trend.

The international markets are skyrocketing, especially Asia and China. We have a program focused on international travelers, and work with tour operators because a lot of international visitors like to go through tour operators to show the Montana sights they can sell to international markets.

No doubt Glacier and Yellowstone are on that list. Montana’s attractions certainly don’t stop with the national parks, there’s some spectacular scenery on those other 93 million acres but for many out-of-state visitors, whether they’re from other countries or other states, the national parks are the first thing they want to see.