Bicycle tourism: providing economic development opportunities for Montana.

• Author: Nickerson, Norma Polovitz

Bicycle tourism is gaining momentum in Montana, and not just on the downhill segment. In fact, it could be the new phenomenon in the travel industry. And it's definitely an economic boon: Multiday bicyclists take longer to get anywhere, thereby showering the communities they stop in with outside dollars.

From the 1890s, biking was the means for independent transport until motor vehicles took over in the 1920s. By the mid-1960s, the surge of air travel redefined what it meant to travel. Today, bicycle tourism is starting to receive the attention of researchers, destinations, and entrepreneurs. It is a form of travel that slows the pace down to a level where travelers can view, hear, smell, and feel the countryside in which they are traveling.

A recent study by the Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research (ITRR) at the University of Montana in cooperation with the Adventure Cycling Association found that bicycle tourism offers economic development potential for small businesses in towns throughout the state. Bicycle travelers spend an average of $75.75 per person per day and stay eight nights or more in the state. In contrast, the average 2013 nonresident Montana vacationer during July, August, and September spent $69.12 per person per day and stayed 6.17 nights. This equates to an additional $180 spent per person by cyclists in Montana during the eight-day average stay. However, this is a conservative estimate. Figure 1 shows that the majority of bicyclists spent 10 or more nights in Montana.

ITRR always uses the conservative estimates from survey data though. Table 1 displays the average amount spent per category. The "All Cyclists" column averages the spending of all respondents even if they completely skipped writing down any expenditure amount. We replaced all missing data with a zero, which inherently reduces the average. The second column provides the average amount spent by all cyclists who reported spending in at least one category, with zeroes in remaining categories where spending amounts were not recorded. The results indicate that bicycle tourists in Montana spend between $75 and $102 per person per day.

In addition to spending more time and money in the state than the average vacationer, these cyclists spent nights in various towns throughout the state. The map (Figure 2) displays how many of the respondents to the ITRR survey spent nights in each of the listed communities. This was a sample of 497 cyclists who said they spent nights in Montana over the past three years on a cycling trip. Adventure Cycling Association has three major routes--Trans American route, Lewis and Clark route, and Northern Tier route (Figure 2). Specialized maps for each route guide cyclists through Montana. As shown, these...