From Bozeman to Sedona, travelers flock to western U.S.: Travel Weekly

Utah, too, is experiencing overcrowding in areas. During an early June visit to the state, I found moderate crowds at Bryce National Park, but in Zion, the crowds were larger. During a day enjoying Zion’s famous Narrows trail, which takes hikers into the shallow Virgin River as it winds through a deep, sandstone-framed canyon, I felt certain I must have encountered more than 1,000 others. 

Pieper said Utah Luxury Tours avoids some of the Narrows crowds by getting on the river at dawn. In general, the company navigates visitor density by encouraging customers to travel offseason, avoiding peak times of day at the most popular attractions and by visiting lesser-known locales.

This advice will likely need to be applied more generally in the region. Tom Foley, Inntopia’s senior vice president for business process and analytics, said that he believes a fundamental pivot is taking place in the demand for mountain travel. 

For destination management organization (DMOs), that shift has brought about an inflection point. They have to decide whether to maintain a tourist-centric approach to their promotions or pivot to a more balanced approach that places more emphasis on residents.

Some DMOs are already making that adjustment. 

Breckenridge, Colo., for instance, developed a destination management plan in 2019, before the pandemic began. The plan comprises a 10-year road map with the goal of ensuring “economic sustainability for the community while preserving the quality of life for residents and quality of place for visitors.”

The plan’s goals include elevating and protecting the town’s character, delivering a more balanced year-round tourism economy and moving people from vehicles to walking or biking. 

The Breckenridge Tourism Office has pushed forward on those goals during the pandemic, launching “B Like Breckenridge,” a campaign that encourages people to walk more, leave no trace, stick to the trails and respect wildlife, among other things.

The DMO is also working to draw more offseason tourism, for instance by holding a craft spirits festival in mid-October, and is also tailoring marketing more aggressively toward guests who will stay through the week, rather than just weekends. 

“There has to be a harmony. A balance of a tourist economy and a residents’ place,” said Austyn Dineen, the tourism office’s public relations director.

In Sedona, marketing efforts are also geared toward driving visitation during the off-peak periods, which fall in the summer and the winter. But Strauss said that efforts to better manage tourism are handcuffed to a significant degree by an Arizona state law that forbids municipalities from regulating vacation rentals. Since that law was put in place in 2016, the equivalent of 2,500 rooms have been added to Sedona’s short-term lodging stock, she said. 

Still, the town and its tourism leaders are taking a number of steps aimed at mitigating the impact of the area’s rapidly growing popularity. 

In April, the Sedona Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau joined the Global Sustainable Tourism Council. Early this year, the city hired its first transit manager. And the town is also pushing forward with the Sedona in Motion transportation plan, which, among other items, seeks to mitigate the regular traffic backups that occur on Arizona State Route 89A heading into the city’s main Uptown commercial district.

Also on the plate, said Strauss, is a shuttle system slated for launch next March to take visitors to Sedona’s most popular trailheads.

To some in Sedona, tourism is associated primarily with trash, traffic and trailhead congestion, Strauss said.

“It’s not the truth. Yet we need to try and mitigate those impacts,” she said. “At the same time, I would rather be experiencing growing pains than job losses, business closures and a community crumbling and losing public services because there is no money.”