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Show Travelers Stay Longer, Utah Report Indicates A travel survey conducted by Travel Utah, Inc., during dur-ing the summer months of May, June, July and August, Aug-ust, has produced some interesting in-teresting statistics and appears ap-pears to have revealed that visitors to Utah are staying stay-ing longer and spending more money than before. Ronald E. McMillin, Executive Ex-ecutive Vice President and General Manager of Travel Utah, Inc., thestate's official of-ficial private sector travel organization, this week reported re-ported on the results of returned re-turned questionnaires, included in-cluded as a part of the organization's or-ganization's "Guide to Traveling Tra-veling and Shopping in Utah." Thousands of guides were distributed free, to travelers, by members of the state-wide organization, posing a number of questions. ques-tions. Here are some of the results1 The average party visiting visit-ing Utah averaged 2.7 persons. per-sons. Travel expenditures increased in-creased with the average party spending $35.60. The average tourist party's par-ty's length of stay averaged 6.2 days in Utah with many travelers indicating they spent a week to a month visiting Utah's parks or mountains. The majority of all travelers tra-velers to Utah came from California. Other travelers came from surrounding and midwestern states. Comments regarding Utah vary from good to bad, which will help Travel Utah and its members in evaluating evalu-ating its effectiveness in serving visitors. First the good impressions: impres-sions: "We enjoyed visiting your beautiful state. Don't change chan-ge Utah. Your state is beautiful. beau-tiful. Everyone was so courteous cour-teous and helpful." "Utah has a lot to offer so publicize it in the Easf. More people should enjoy the scenic splendor. I can't wait to tell my friends. "Your parks are fascinating fascin-ating and we enjoyed immensely im-mensely our vacation in your enchanting land." Typical of a few of the negative comments: "Seeing the Great Salt Lake was the biggest disappointment disap-pointment of my life." "We would have stayed in Utah longer had we been able to find decent campgrounds." camp-grounds." "Motels were dirty and crummy and hard to find in our price category. Gasoline Gaso-line is too high priced." "I was unable to get a good meal in your state." "Need more signs unable un-able to find scenic attractions." attrac-tions." Mr. McMillan said, as the result of three major factors, fac-tors, the demand for leisure lei-sure time activity will increase. in-crease. These factors are: . The increase in family income, in-come, the increase in leisure lei-sure time and the increase in the mobility of our population. pop-ulation. As a result of these factors, Utah's travel industry in-dustry will continue to expand ex-pand at a fantastic rate and such surveys can aid us in evaluating our advertising, adver-tising, marketing and promotional pro-motional programs. |