| OCR Text |
Show Travel year has "gone ape," officials report this week " prf,Mc-t of the Auio-vllf Auio-vllf tlub',' l'uh' s,ln,!i "I1 Indusirv reprint-sS(tfM. reprint-sS(tfM. W inaiotors-from mo-. mo-. fnuf to visitor counts I liHirUt ttrotlons to Jtson for l'th-s tourism l'think hlf the worlds Mxi y hrre-" S4VS ou" Lilis. "It's been one of the I Hcst trvfl sfsons weVe hJlj -Zoumadakls adds I hile a nationwide AAA J Indicates a 6 per.-ent i lijrtfth' rise in business, his i tdt Lake City office Is up 30 percent over Inst season 111 telephone and walk -In m,ir. les and the distribution of literature. I'tah Travel Council Director Direct-or Phillip J. Keene 111 says he expects this season to measure mea-sure up well against lust year's Bicentennial travel boom. "Researchers at Utah State University's Institute for the Study of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism have projected that non-resident vacationers spent $156 million in Utah during the 1976 calendar year," Keene reports, re-ports, "l-arly figures indicate well surpass that figure this year." Mclva Sine, executive vice president of the Utah Innkeepers Inn-keepers Association, says the state's hotel and motel owners report revenue up five to seven percent over last year. "Salt Lake City properties are filling up every night, and In Canyonlunds, Color Country and I'anoramaland, they're turning people away at the rate of about 50 rooms a night." Highway traffic, too, is up almost universally across the state, according to Utah Department De-partment of Transportation figures. At 68 traffic recording record-ing stations located throughout through-out Utah, there's an overall 7.6 percent Increase for the year to date (through July) and Increases of 6.8 and 8.1 percent for June and July, respectively. Some sample increases for the year to date Include: US) east of Kannh 1Q 5 percent; US-I6.1 north of Moti-ticello, Moti-ticello, 27.4 percent; U-9S near llanksvllle, 1H.) percent; 1-70 near Green River, 11.3 percent; US-tW north of Garden Gard-en City, 9.4 percent; U-44 North of Vernal, 7.0 percent; Parley's Canyon, 6.9 percent; Richfield, 4.9 percent; and. mo cast of F.cho Junction, 3.4 percent . Utah's state park system shows an 11.6 percent Increase In-crease for the calendar year through July, from 3,771, 999 visitors in 1976 to 4,210,433 in 1977. The drought appears to have had little or no effect on m visitation, with 14 of the slate's 23 water-related parks showing an Increase in the number of visitors. And some of those increase huve been dramatic: Deer Creek Lake, for example, up neurly 60,000 visitors through July with a total of 201,452; Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake up 70,000, from 164,041 to 233,436; and Willard Bay, one of the most astounding leaps, up 129 percent, from 129,222 In 1976 to 378,518 in 1977. Despite these indicators of Utah's tourism health (and inexplicably, according to a National Park Service spokesperson), spokes-person), national park sites in Utah report un overall decrease de-crease in visitation for the yeur to dale. Tallies for the five national parks are; Arches, Arch-es, 4 8 percent; Bryce Canyon, Can-yon, -I percent; Canyonlands, -3 percent; Capitol Reef, -3 percent; and Zion, -10 percent. per-cent. Some notable exceptions are the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Lake Powell), Pow-ell), up 74 percent from last year, and Natural Bridges National Monument, located on Utah's new award-winning scenic highway, up 67 percent. per-cent. While it appears that there are fewer visitors this year, they're staying much longer at many sites. Lake Powell, for instance, up 74 percent in actual visitor count, is up 320 percent in visitor hours. And at Zion National Park, where visitation is down, overnight camping was up almost 10,000 in July, compared with July, 1976. "We believe there's evidence evi-dence that people are going to a park and taking somt extra time to explore it, rather than dividing their time among a handful of national park sites," says Jim Isenogle, National Park Service assistant assis-tant regional director. |
