As the ski season shifts into the summer recreation season, would-be tourists are scrambling to book camp spots, entrance passes, hotel rooms and permits before they’re all gone. And as anyone who has waited in a Lagoon-like lift line at their local ski resort, or has discovered that there isn’t a Zion camp spot available until August knows, Utah is drowning in tourists.
The 2022-2023 ski season shattered the records for ski visits (7.1 million and a 22% increase) and money spent by out-of-state ski visitors ($2 billion). This year’s figures aren’t in yet, but despite less snow than last year’s record setting base, both in-state and out-of-state spending by skiers has increased the last four seasons, and will likely continue.
Just over a decade ago, in the spring of 2013, a 20-story “wallscape” debuted above L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard promoting Utah’s “Mighty 5″ National Parks. “The launch (was) placed in television ads, building wraps, digital billboards, magazines and social media (all over the U.S. and worldwide) at a cost of $3.1 million, (and) coincided with a steep increase in park visitation that has continued unabated ever since.” The campaign was a runaway success.
Since that time, visitor totals at Utah National Parks have nearly doubled, yet the number of full-time employees has remained the same or declined. The same is true for Utah’s ski resorts. “Despite the gush in skier and snowboarder visits, the number of recreational jobs, including for resort workers, remains roughly the same as it was in 2015-16 when Utah saw 2.6 million fewer skier visits.”
While these data certainly challenge the idea that tourism is such a great (but low paying) job-creator, I don’t mean to suggest for a moment that we’d be better off with the fossil fuel/cattle/alfalfa economy that our anachronistic state legislature adores. Utah’s outdoor recreation economy ranks ninth in the country and utterly dwarfs extractive industries in terms of jobs and revenues.
Despite the stewardship wisdom of the prophets, though, if what you really worship is profit, as Utah’s business and political leaders do, then massive tourist numbers are desirable. If, however, you care about wildlife, air quality, water supplies, garbage and sewage, traffic, solitude, open spaces, preservation, climate change, quiet gateway communities and high-quality recreation experiences, then these exploding visitor numbers are a mighty disaster.
Even the tourism dollar zealots agree that the National Parks are suffering under the mob of visitors. Their solution: Push the crowds toward other national monuments and state parks, and thereby spread the same problems to areas never designed to absorb such visitation. They even have a philosophy for it: “a perpetual visitor economy.” And hokey campaign term for it: “The Red Emerald Strategic Plan.”
Who pays for all of this tourism advertising? We do. When you do a tourist thing like rent a car, book a hotel room or pay sales tax on 21 tourism-related industries, you pay into a fund that goes to the Utah Office of Tourism to encourage even more people to do the same thing. Since 2005, it has spent more than $100 million marketing Utah. That’s correct: $100 million.
Not only is the tourism promotion relentless, it’s often false advertising. Visit Utah.com’s Lake Powell homepage includes a beautiful photo of a brimming full Lake Powell instead of the two-thirds empty, bathtub-ringed reservoir that suffers from climate change and overuse. Their boating guide landing page does the same thing with an old photo. The Lake Powell Pipeline Organization promotes the same environmental mirage with a Lake Powell photo that nobody under the age of 30 will ever see in person. And Utah’s State Park’s webpage displays several once Great Salt Lake photos long before it teetered on the edge of biological collapse surrounded by toxic dust flats.
Despite a mighty long list of problems with the Mighty 5 campaign, it’s not going away. In fact, the Utah Office of Tourism has now copywritten Forever Mighty®. You can even indulge in Forever Mighty swag and logos. And despite a lot of sustainable, ethical and resilient rhetoric on their snazzy website, on nearly every page is the promotion of “growth.”
With endless growth in mind, you better make your recreation reservations soon.
Eric C. Ewert is a professor in and chair of Weber State University’s Department of Geography, Environment & Sustainability. His current research and teaching interests lie in environmental studies, the American West, population, historical and economic geography and geospatial technologies. Views are the opinion of the author, and in no way represent Weber State University.
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