Congestion at Arches National Park has led park officials to consider implementing a reservation system for visitors. The problem is that the current allocation system — a long wait in line to pay a nominal entrance fee, followed by an interminable search for a parking space at popular trailheads — leads to a poor visitor experience. Overuse of the park also damages the very resources that people are there to enjoy.

A reservation system will shift a portion of visitation from times when the park is overused to other times when the park is not so crowded. An economic study commissioned by the National Park Service found that a newly implemented reservation system would likely cause a temporary loss in visitation, resulting in reduced economic benefit to the Moab economy. In just a few years, though, visitation would rebound as people and commercial tour groups learned to work within the new rules. Still, overall park visitation would be capped, especially during the peak seasons.

Arches is not the only congested park in Utah. If you’ve ever waited 90 minutes for a shuttle bus in Zion National Park, you might have thought that Zion was overly crowded as well. You’d be right: Zion is considering a reservation system, too.

Has Utah’s capacity to attract outdoor tourists been maxed out? Not only is the answer an emphatic “no,” but the capacity constraints at Arches and Zion offer the prospect of spreading the benefits of national park tourism to a broader set of rural Utah communities.

Research conducted with my colleagues Tatiana Drugova and Man-Keun Kim has confirmed that Utah’s “Mighty 5” ad campaign has dramatically increased visitation to four of Utah’s five national parks.

Our study, which is being prepared for publication, found that the Mighty 5 campaign did not result in any statistically measurable increase in visits in Zion, perhaps the most congested of Utah’s parks.

However, the modeling found that the Mighty 5 campaign spurred more people to visit Arches, Bryce Canyon National Park, Canyonlands National Park and Capitol Reef National Park. Each of these parks enjoyed double-digit percentage increases in annual visitation as a result of the Mighty 5 campaign.

These results, and ongoing congestion problems at Arches and Zion, suggest a unique opportunity for the NPS and Utah’s Office of Tourism to use park tourism as part of a coordinated rural economic development strategy.

Canyonlands and Capitol Reef are relatively uncongested parks that offer high quality recreational experiences that are the equal (or near equal) of a visit to Arches or Zion. Utah is also home to large national monuments filled with scenic wonders.

The Mighty 5 advertising effort powerfully demonstrated that a well-designed and well-executed multi-media campaign can drive visitors to relatively remote areas of Utah. But instead of a campaign that focuses equally on each of Utah’s five parks, why not design a campaign that places greater emphasis on Utah’s less visited parks and public lands?

Utah already does a bit of this with its “Road to the Mighty 5” campaign, but this effort primarily featured state parks. While state parks have their constituency, they have neither the drawing power nor the economic impact of national parks.

A coordinated effort on the part of the NPS and the Utah Office of Tourism to focus promotion efforts on less-visited parks can achieve two goals. First, it would relieve a portion of the congestion pressure at Arches and Zion. Second, the increasing economic benefits of national park tourism would spread to less visited national parks and scenic public lands in Emery, Garfield, Kane, San Juan and Wayne counties.

Paul M. Jakus Dept. of Applied Economics Utah State University