- A new study found a $5 surcharge on entrance fees at Yellowstone would bring in $20 million a year.
- The surcharge would translate into an estimated 112,000 people deciding not to visit the park.
- President Trump recently signed an executive order seeking to increase international visitor fees.
By increasing entrance fees by as little as $5 per person, a new study determined that Yellowstone National Park could add an additional $20 million to its coffers every year. If international visitor fees are increased by $100, the report showed that the park’s annual income could go up nearly five times.
The study found, too, that those small increases in entrance fees would only affect a small percentage of domestic visitors — some 2.8% would not go at all as a result. The larger increase for international visitors would be even smaller, with 1.3% foregoing a visit based on such a rate hike.
“This is about investing in Yellowstone’s future,” said Tate Watkins, a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center and the report’s co-author, in a provided statement. “Our analysis shows that Yellowstone can significantly increase its revenue to maintain and improve the park, while keeping it accessible and protecting it for future generations.”
Yellowstone’s entrance fees only cover approximately 30% of its yearly $43 million maintenance budget. Just that part of its budget alone — forget about all other operating costs like payroll and utilities. Of the $14 or so million it does take in with entrance fees, the park’s legally allowed to keep 80% for improvement projects. That leaves it with a little over $12 million to address all of the various infrastructure that inevitably needs attention.
How much more could a surcharge raise?
With a backlog of maintenance that would cost $1.5 billion to address, any form of additional income could go a long way toward the park’s getting back ahead of the operation’s normal wear and tear.
“So that’s a big concern is that if we don’t fund these parks, then there just won’t be anything left for us to visit or they will be degraded to the point where we don’t want to,” said Sara Sutherland, University of California-Davis lecturer and Property and Environment Research Center senior research fellow.
The Property and Environment Research Center is an advocacy group focused on providing capital market-based solutions for issues facing conservation efforts. It’s a capitalist, partnership-driven approach to ensuring that conservation is financially viable.
As such, Sutherland and the center believe that surcharges are a sensible way for the park to begin chipping away at its maintenance and to get back into the black.
The center’s study ran the numbers on a variety of different surcharge models for consideration in addition to the blanket $5 surcharge for each individual domestic visitor and $100 for international visitors. It broke out more granular assessments for what might happen if locals were not charged and nonlocal domestic visitors had higher surcharges, as well as a variety of international surcharges options.
One variation of free entry for locals and higher entry fees for nonlocal domestic visitors raised nearly $35 million in additional revenue for the park. Of course, the highest grossing option included adding $100 per international visitor.
The numbers were based on visitor totals and, as such, included increasing fees for discounted visitors like seniors and military personnel. Sutherland said that the surcharges added to discounted visitors could easily be shifted if the model were ever to go into effect. The purpose of the study was to highlight creative, low-impact solutions to a massive budget problem and she said there are ways to maintain long-standing discounts.
The reason the study was not applied to a broader spectrum of national parks was because Yellowstone has collected and was willing to share data from visitors surveys. The center hopes to expand the study’s scope, and plans to if similar information becomes available.
Didn’t Trump sign an executive order to raise park fees?
The Trump administration seems to agree with the principles of the center’s assessment. Just a week after the report was released, President Donald Trump signed an executive order called Making America Beautiful Again by Improving Our National Parks, which emphasized ways for parks to increase their revenue.
“The secretary of the Interior shall develop a strategy to increase revenue and improve the recreational experience at national parks by appropriately increasing entrance fees and recreation pass fees for nonresidents in areas of the National Park System,” the order reads.
In an accompanying press release, the White House made clear that all increases would only apply to international visitors, saying “nonresidents” does not refer to nonlocal visitors to the national parks but to non-U.S. citizens.
“Whenever we see something that we’ve been advocating for make it into the mainstream political sphere and actually happen, that’s really exciting,” Sutherland said. “We’re excited about the opportunity to potentially influence or help.”
Sutherland and Watkins do make clear, though, that such surcharges should be kept by individual parks so that they can manage their own financial security more explicitly.
“Increasing fee revenue means Yellowstone doesn’t have to depend as heavily on the whims of Congress,” Sutherland said. “Local park leadership can make long-term, locally driven investments to improve infrastructure, enhance conservation and better serve visitors.”
Won’t increased fees stop people from visiting?
In a separate, supportive study conducted at the University of Wyoming, Stephen Newbold, assessed how various demographics of visitors might react to small changes to the park’s entrance fees. Using visitor surveys from 2016-2018, Newbold assessed how “elastic” — or willing to accept — consumer behavior would be to a price change.
The conclusions suggested that a very small percentage of people would actually be dissuaded if a surcharge or price increase was tacked onto entrance fees. The surcharge with the biggest benefit — the one to international visitors — would have the absolute smallest impact. But, even if those percentages are still small, they equate to approximately 110,000 visitors not going to the park.
That being said, Newbold’s study dives down into various demographics to understand the implications. Across eight different groups separated by income, age and race, the percentages were even lower than the sum total. For example, 0.25% of low-income, nonwhite visitors would change their plans if there was a 10% increase in entrance fees.
Ultimately, those findings only further emphasized the Property and Environment Research Center’s overall message.
“We’re talking about a few extra dollars per visitor to help sustain one of the greatest natural treasures on Earth,” Watkins said in the press release. “This is a practical and necessary step to ensure Yellowstone remains extraordinary — for this generation and the next.”