Survey respondents were specifically asked to report the
amount of money their party spent on various spending categories
both within Yellowstone National Park and in the surrounding
gateway communities within 60 miles of the Park on their most
recent visit. The average party size was 3.3 people and the average
length of a trip spent both in the Park and in the local area was 3.6
days. The average surveyed visitor party spent a total of $742 on a
trip to Yellowstone National Park in 2009. To calculate the economic
impacts associated with this visitor spending, the approach
taken by Stynes (2008) is followed. First, survey respondents are
split into segments which serve to categorize them based on their
type of stay on their most recent trip to Yellowstone National Park.
Visitor parties in each segment may have different spending patterns,
as well as different trip characteristics. These segments
include1:
Day Trips: visitor groups staying in the Park and the surrounding
area for one day or less;
Hotel: visitors staying at a hotel or motel, either inside or within
60 miles of the Park;
Camp In: visitors camping inside the Park;
Camp out: visitors camping outside but within 60 miles of the
Park; and
Other: visitors reporting no lodging expenses within 60 miles of
the Park;
Survey results were used to compile trip characteristics for
visitor parties, including the percentage of respondents within each
‘type of stay’ segment, the average party size, average length of stay
in days, both inside and within 60 miles of the Park, as well as the
percentage of respondents indicating that for their most recent trip
to Yellowstone National Park, visiting the Park was the primary or
sole purpose of the trip. The average party size ranged from 2.84 to
4.19 people and the average length of stay ranged from 1 to 6.95
days. Re-entry rates for each segment are based on those reported
in Stynes (2008). These indicate the average number of times visitors
in each segment enter the Park on a given trip. These trip
characteristics, categorized by ‘type of stay’ segment, are presented
in Table 3.
While total recreation visits to Yellowstone National Park vary
each year, some of the highest visitation numbers on record have
occurred in recent years. To connect sample results from the 2009
survey to the larger population of visitors to Yellowstone National
Park, annual recreation visits to the Park from the years 2005