Tourism

From Sustaining Jackson Hole Wiki

Tourism was Teton County’s primary economic activity during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but has been eclipsed in importance during the past 15 years by income from investments and professional services. While tourism is still a major economic force, tourist numbers today are essentially what they were in 1990. Meanwhile, Teton County’s economy has gone through the roof.

It’s impossible to say exactly how many people visit Jackson Hole each year, for only four categories of tourists are accurately and reliably measured: visitors to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, skiers at the local ski areas, and passengers at the airport. Even these numbers are problematic, as they include locals and repeat visits. Further, none of them capture the many types of visitors who don’t engage in these activities; e.g. hunters, snowmobilers, and those who don’t ski or visit a national park. However, the best available measures put visitor numbers at some 2.5 million each summer and perhaps 350,000 in the winter. Between 1991 and 2004, the number of recreational visitors to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks didn’t increase at all; the number of skiers at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort grew a total of 28 percent; and the number of people flying out of the Jackson Hole Airport grew a total of 26 percent. (See graphs 4-15 through 4-18.) Growth in those categories is small considering that, during the 1990s, the county’s total income grew 240 percent, its per-capita income grew 150 percent, and its population grew 63 percent.

In the context of these data, the logical conclusion is that tourism – while essential to those in the tourism industry, critical for the sales tax revenues that fund local government, and at the bedrock of Jackson Hole’s emerging lifestyle economy – is integral to the economic well-being of an increasingly smaller proportion of Teton County’s residents. While many people still perceive Teton County’s economy as dependent on tourism, a more accurate description is that the area’s attractiveness as a place to live has become its biggest economic driver.

Sources: National Park Service, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Jackson Hole Airport, Internal Revenue Service

Graph 4-15 Recreational visits to Grand Teton National Park peaked in the latter part of the 1990s, and have fallen roughly 14 percent since then. Recreational visits are the key figure for Grand Teton, as the park’s total visitation count includes all the traffic traveling between Jackson and Dubois. Source: Grand Teton National Park

Graph 4-16 As with Grand Teton, recreational visitations to Yellowstone National Park peaked in the latter 1990s, and have fallen somewhat since then. Visitations in 2004 were virtually the same as those a decade earlier. Source: Yellowstone National Park

Graph 4-17 The number of skier days at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort increased steadily during the latter half of the 1990s, and in the most recent season fell just short of 400,000. Most major resorts have seen relatively flat skier numbers during the last several years, a function of an aging demographic and slow times in the tourism industry. Source: Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

Graph 4-18 The number of people flying out of the Jackson Hole Airport has increased and decreased as a function of changes in air service, air fares, and the degree of community support for air subsidy programs. Through an organization called JH AIR, business interests in Jackson Hole have made a concerted effort to boost air service during the past few years, an effort which paid off in record enplanements in 2003 and 2004. Source: Jackson Hole Airport