Hospitality Administration and Management Commons^™

The Impact Of Fees On Visitation Of National Parks, Zvi Schwartz, Li-Chun Lin

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study assesses the impact of the change in revenue management policy (namely the increased public land recreation fees) on the number of domestic and international travelers that visit the large, mostly well-known US National Park System sites. Baseline, multivariate demand models were developed based on secondary data from 10 years prior to the fee policy change, and were used to predict demand in years following the fee change. The predictions of the baseline demand models were then compared to the sites' actual visitation. The differences between the actual and the predicted visitation are statistically significant, indicating that the change …