Is Travel and Tourism Spending Trending Up in Glacier’s Gateway Communities?
A new report shows visitors spent $372 million in communities near Glacier National Park in 2023, infusing $554.5 million into the local economy — slightly more than the previous year. But tourism officials and hospitality leaders say that while goods and services may cost more, visitors’ spending habits appear to be trending down.
By Tristan Scott
For businesses catering to tourists visiting gateway communities around Glacier National Park, the floor is high even when the economic ceiling is low. It’s Glacier National Park, after all; the adage that you “can’t eat the scenery” doesn’t really apply here, and the short seasonal window during which tourists can drive the full length of the Going-to-the-Sun Road still functions as a veritable spending spigot.
In July, August and September, tourism spending in and around Glacier is big business.
“People come to Glacier National Park to experience the wonder of iconic wildlife, clean water, rugged mountains carved by glaciers, and the vastness of the scenic and wild landscape. Park visitors end up supporting our local economies along the way,” Glacier Superintendent Dave Roemer said in a prepared statement following the release of a new National Park Service report, “2023 National Park Visitor Spending Effects,” which found that 325.5 million visitors spent $26.4 billion in communities near national parks. “We’re proud that Glacier National Park supports over 5,000 jobs and generates more than [$372 million] in revenue to communities near the park.”
The report tracked visitor spending in communities near all national parks, including Glacier, where last year 2,933,616 visitors spent $372,129,000. That spending supported 5,725 jobs in the local area and had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $554,585,000, according to the report. It’s also up compared to 2022, when a similar economic report pegged visitor spending at $368 million, supporting 5,690 jobs for a cumulative benefit of $548,586,000 to the local economy.
That may be good news for an individual proprietor trying to endure an economic downturn, or for a destination business to center its marketing around, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into broader macroeconomic health.
Diane Medler, executive director of Discover Kalispell, a local destination marketing and stewardship organization, said spending is up in part because goods and services cost more.
“I’d attribute the increase in spending in neighboring communities mostly to the fact that we’re all spending more, especially when traveling — airfare, rental cars, lodging, food, goods and services,” Medler said.
Other destination and marketing experts agree. The travel and tourism-focused firm Future Partners puts out a monthly State of the American Traveler report that tracks expected travel budgets. The mean travel budget for the next 12 months as of August 2024 is $4,553. In December 2023, the mean budget was $4,363.
Other data sources, however, reveal slight declines in both visitations and spending.
In Kalispell, the average annual hotel occupancy in 2023 decreased 0.68% from 2022. Credit card spending in Kalispell shows domestic visitor spending during 2023 decreased 4.4% from 2022; however, spending by international visitors (largely Canadian, followed by Germans, Australians and Brits) in Kalispell during 2023 increased 27% over 2022.
Last year also brought the end of the record-high hotel occupancy that began registering across the industry in 2021, Medler said.
“High inflation and the looming threat of a widely forecasted recession — one that fortunately never materialized — weighed down demand growth,” according to Discover Kalispell’s monthly industry report published at the end of last year. “Occupancy, particularly at the beginning of the year, dipped below pre-pandemic levels as the rapid supply growth overcorrected for the soaring occupancy from previous years.”
Short-term rental occupancy also slumped, decreasing in Kalispell by 9.7%, largely due to a 24.6% increase in supply as homeowners looked to capitalize on the demand.
Julie Mullins, executive director of Explore Whitefish and the Whitefish Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Glacier National Park “continues to be our top warm-season economic driver in Whitefish.” She awarded high marks to Roemer and the park’s administrators for working closely with destination marketing organizations to navigate seasonal changes in the park’s vehicle reservation pilot program. However, she noted that the advent of the reservation system marked the beginning of a recent downturn in visitor spending.
“Since the implementation of the vehicle reservation system, Explore Whitefish has observed a 4-6% year-over-year decline in warm-season visitor spending,” Mullins said in an email, noting that Explore Whitefish data typically runs 45-50 days behind, “so we’re still analyzing whether this dip in 2022 and 2023 is an anomaly or a sustained trend.”
“Additionally, we are working with Glacier National Park to better understand the origin cities of visitors and their booking timelines,” Mullins said. “Historically, fly-in and long-distance travelers stay longer and spend more, so we’re investigating whether the decline is due to fewer of these travelers or is connected to the reservation system. These insights will guide our future messaging and strategies to ensure we continue to serve our community and business members effectively.”
Glacier Park International Airport continued to show strong passenger growth throughout 2023, when 895,998 passengers passed through the airport, an increase of 7.6% compared to 2022.
Flannery Freund, the co-owner of Home Ranch Bottoms, a bar, restaurant and live music venue located along the western edge of Glacier National Park on the North Fork Flathead River, described her experience this past summer as the busiest since she and her husband, Dan Freund, opened shop four years ago — the same year the vehicle reservation system debuted.
To accommodate travelers confused by the reservation system, or who arrive at Home Ranch Bottoms, which is located south of the park’s most remote entrance, not knowing where they are, the Freunds have equipped the bar with an online terminal to help visitors access the vehicle reservation website and acquire a ticket for the next day.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” Flannery Freund said. “At 7 p.m., when the reservations are released online for the next day, you can have a margarita in hand and a burger in front of you while we look at the screen together. That’s how we help our guests figure out how to get into the park.”
According to Dan Freund, a busy summer this year doesn’t necessarily boost the bottom line compared to last year, particularly if visitors are spending less, which is what Home Ranch Bottoms experienced this summer, with individual spending transactions amounting to, on average, 5% less than last summer.
The couple was also careful to note that comparing summers at the doorstep of Glacier National Park is an apples-to-oranges analog, particularly given the logistical inconsistencies that wildfires and global pandemics have delivered since 2020.
“This was only year four for us, and every year has been so drastically different, they’re hard to compare,” Flannery Freund said. “When we opened in 2021, we were in the first year of unlock down, so we had panicked travelers showing up in a state of shock. Then the Hay Creek Fire broke out on July 21, which is the earliest wildfire in the park’s history, and that threw a wrench in our business plan. That was year one. But here we are in year four and it was our busiest year yet, even if it felt like there were fewer people out on the road.”
Up the road at the Polebridge Mercantile, which in 2020 and 2021 was inundated with visitors who flocked to the Polebridge entrance station because it didn’t require vehicle reservations, business is slightly down from those peak years.
“But that’s OK,” said Will Hammerquist, who owns the Mercantile. “I think it’s a better pace and we always want to keep Polebridge, Polebridge.”
New this year, Hammerquist opened a similar business on the east side of Glacier, along Looking Glass Road near Kiowa Junction. Called the Kyiyo Mercantile and bearing the same barn-red storefront as its sister store in Polebridge, the new location “has been well received and is actually having some of our busiest days of the year right now.”
Hammerquist also noted an obvious environmental factor that has led to a smooth and steady summer around Glacier – the lack of consequential wildfires.
“I think that probably one of the biggest factors in the success of the season is that we were blessed with the August rains,” Hammerquist said.