Interest in Utah’s five national parks rebounded in 2024 to the highest levels since a record-breaking surge in visitation in 2021.
Over 11.1 million visited Utah’s “Mighty 5” last year, marking a 5% bump from the previous year and falling just 115,000 shy of the record set four years ago as people rushed to travel in a post-COVID-19 pandemic world, per KSL.com analysis of National Park Service data.
In all, visitation grew at four of Utah’s “Mighty 5” parks last year. Zion National Park reclaimed its top spot as Utah’s busiest park in 2024, drawing over 4.9 million visits last year.
The southwest Utah park appears to have narrowly bested Grand Canyon for the title of the most-visited national park in the West, but final data has yet to be reported from some of the region’s other busier parks. Its total ended up about 93,000 shy of its record high set in 2021, which remains the only time it ever surpassed 5 million visits.
Capitol Reef National Park in south-central Utah was the only park among the five to break a record, tallying 1.42 million visits in 2024 to top its previous record of 1.4 million set in 2021. Arches National Park in Moab was the lone exception in terms of growth, having about 15,000 fewer visits than in 2023.
Utah’s historical parks, national monuments and other areas monitored by the National Park Service collected about 5.8 million additional visits last year, though some information remains incomplete.

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area — straddling the Utah-Arizona border — attracted 4.6 million visits to account for most of these visits. While last year represents about an 11% decline in year-over-year visitation, it’s still the park’s second-highest total on record and almost 2 million visits above visitation in 2022. It notched a record 5.2 million visits in 2023, which helped it surge past Zion in visitation numbers for the first time.
Park officials credited Lake Powell’s water level improvements and more ramps reopening for its return to popularity over the last two years.
What’s driving the increase?
Visitation numbers don’t explain the ups and downs at different parks, but tourism experts have theories. Decreasing inflation, lower gas prices and other economic factors could have helped draw people in not from within the state but all over the world. Salt Lake City, Provo and St. George airports all reported record travel numbers last year, potentially factoring in national park visitation.
Natalie Randall, director of the Utah Office of Tourism, said a lot of the tourism growth Utah enjoyed mirrored national travel trends in 2024. McKinsey and Company reported in May 2024 that inflation had been a major factor in Americans traveling, while European and Asian travel was on the rise.
European travel to southwest Utah, which had lagged since the COVID-19 pandemic, has rebounded, said Breck Dockstader, president of the Utah Tourism Industry Association, and owner and CEO of Cliffrose Development in Washington County, a company that manages hotels' hospitality. However, he said other historic global markets, such as Asian countries, have struggled to rebound since the pandemic.
“It’s been complicated to understand. We haven’t pinpointed why it took so long to get (European travel) back,” he said.
Dispersing visitation
The world is familiar with Utah’s “Mighty 5” campaign, but visitation numbers are beginning to reflect some of the state’s more recent campaigns. Randall points out that the Utah Office of Tourism has shifted more to development and stewardship programs, which include dispersing visitation to other parks. It’s partially why state parks continue to break visitation records, including in 2024.
However, some of those efforts are to disperse national park visitation at different times of the year so parks aren’t flooded by visitation all at once. That way communities close to them aren’t affected by a drop in visitation throughout the year without overcrowding parks.

Utah’s travel and tourism industry, which generated a record $12.7 billion in visitor spending in 2023, supports nearly 160,000 jobs directly or indirectly, according to the University of Utah Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s latest report. It also noted leisure and hospitality employment rose by 2.9% in rural Utah last year, its fourth-straight rise after the pandemic.
Through visitor dispersion, months like March, October, November and December — still not as popular as the summer period — have grown at faster rates than the traditionally busy summer months.
“It’s taken a lot of time and investment. We’ve shifted and evolved strategic priorities that really drive our mission — being to elevate life in Utah,” Randall told KSL.com.
Dockstader said this has become a major point for the industry close to national parks. He points out that there are days — especially in the winter — when it’s hard to fill up Washington County hotels because people aren’t traveling to Zion as much as in the summer. Even with the shift in offseason travel, January only accounted for 2.4% of the park’s visitation last year while June accounted for 12.4%.
That’s something companies have done through social media and other unique ways that might spread out visitation. That’s important because many travelers have said they want “authentic experiences” when they arrive, which is threatened by overcrowding.
“It’s not that we need to stop marketing, it’s that we need to be more strategic in how we market in a way we can balance it all out (and) creating a better experience for how you visit the parks,” he said. “Dispersement is really important.”