Travel Tourism and Recreation: Staffing Shortages Cause Concern.

• Author: Sage, Jeremy
• Position: MONTANA ECONOMIC REPORT

As the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality across the globe in early 2020, its impacts were swiftly felt throughout the country, with Montana not being spared at the outset. In April of 2020, when visitation typically begins to return to Yellowstone National Park, the park remained closed. In May, it recorded just over 10% of its typical volume. Likewise, Glacier National Park recorded no visits in these two months. But as domestic travel restrictions eased in June of 2020, many Americans fled to the wide-open spaces offered by Montana, its two parks and places in between.

Beginning in July 2020 and running through October 2021, Yellowstone National Park welcomed more monthly visitors than it had in each respective month in 2019, setting monthly records nine times (Figure l). By the end of September 2021, Yellowstone had already broken its previous annual visitation record of 4.26 million visits; more than 4.8 million are expected when final counts are tallied for 2021.

An arguably more challenging situation unfolded for Glacier National Park; the east entrance remained closed for much of 2020 and into March of 2021. However, it too saw large volumes of visitation. As of September, annual visitation was already the second highest on record and may ultimately top the highest ever at 3.3 million visits (Figure 2).

With the national parks and other open spaces seeing large volumes of visitation, demand for lodging and other sectors of tourism also experienced an increase. A lodging facility use tax is collected across the state and typically sees an increase year-over-year of roughly 7%, with the summer quarter garnering about 45% of total collections. In 2021, the summer quarter was 21% above what would have been expected had this trend continued.

Montana's tourism industry is a major sector of the state s economy; however, visitors arrived while in the midst of continued labor and staffing challenges at many of the businesses required to support tourism.

In a survey by the Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research of more than 300 tourism related businesses, respondents indicated their customer and sales volumes were up 18% and 21% respectively over 2019. Meanwhile, 52% of businesses reported being short-staffed, with the primary areas of shortages being customer and public facing positions, as well as other supporting staff in service-based professions. In...