Fewer Foreigners Visiting U.S.

The decline in foreign visitors to the U.S. this summer has significantly slowed the tourism industry’s recovery, and some regions have been feeling the effect more than others, especially at national parks in the West.

This has helped create a rare opportunity for more Americans to book trips to the Grand Canyon or Yosemite national parks on short notice. Some have been able to snag discounted rooms at park lodgings.

But the dearth of international travelers has the tourism industry worried. Spending by foreigners has been soft in the U.S. since Sept. 11, and this week industry leaders launched lobbying efforts to get government help in trying to shore up the nation’s $100-billion international travel market.

For national park officials looking at dwindling visitor numbers in what is usually the busiest month of the year, such efforts are particularly timely. Many acknowledge that they underestimated how the drop in foreign tourists--who account for at least 40% of the Grand Canyon’s total visitors, for example--would affect the summer season, banking on a much-anticipated increase in drive-in traffic from nearby regions to cover any shortfall.

Although trips by car are up 7% to 10% at the most popular Western parks and campsites still have waiting lists 30 names long, vacancies at lodges and hotels remain easy to find, as cancellations by international groups and tour operators opened up blocks of coveted rooms. At the Grand Canyon, international tour bus arrivals are down 35% this summer.

“We have 50 to 100 rooms available every day for the rest of the year,” said Bruce Brossman, a spokesman for Xanterra Parks & Resorts, which operates the lodges in Grand Canyon National Park. “They’ll eventually sell out, but they’ll go to people just walking in on a weekend whim. You don’t need a year to book ahead anymore. You may not even need an hour.”

At Yosemite, park spokesman Scott Gediman said that 90% of the summer’s visitors are coming from within California and that any vacant hotel rooms inside the park are being snatched up at the last minute by travelers taking a spontaneous trip.

The number of overall visitors to Yosemite this year is down about 10%, Gediman said. July brought about 513,000 visitors, compared with 551,000 for the same month in 2001.

“What’s different is driving around the park and seeing practically no tour buses, but a ton of California license plates,” he said. “It’s pretty quiet. I think the word has gotten out that Yosemite is a different kind of place this year.”

In 2000, international visitors spent $103 billion in the U.S. Last year, spending by foreign visitors dropped to $91.1 billion, a number that is expected to rise slightly to $94 billion in 2002. Overall, the number of international visitors is expected to increase 2% this year, with the majority of that growth coming from Mexico, said Ron Erdmann, a spokesman for the Commerce Department’s tourism industries division.

Leaders of the nation’s $546-billion tourism industry plan to ask Congress this fall to create a national tourism agency to market the U.S. to international travelers. The group would allow individual states and destinations to compete in international markets they wouldn’t normally be able to reach, said William Norman, president of the Travel Industry Assn.

In the West, where foreign visitors spend nearly $23 billion a year, tourism officials hope the extra government help comes soon. Although the economic effect of this summer’s lost tourism dollars is not yet known, officials said whatever boost they received in regional traffic from visitors planning shorter trips closer to home will hardly make up for the drop in international visitors, who tend to take longer vacations and spend more.

“In terms of [international] visitors, we are just sputtering along out here,” said Mark McDermott, chairman of the Western States Tourism Policy Council. “When you consider that 2 million of the 4 [million] or 5 million visitors to the Grand Canyon each year come from other countries, you get some perspective. We simply can’t afford to let them go.”

Traveler concerns about wildfires in the West probably have kept visitors away, as well as the persistent belief that national parks are always overcrowded, McDermott said.

“Those two factors definitely haven’t helped things this summer,” he said. “We’ve done everything to get the word out that the fires are down and the crowds are fine, but people usually have their minds made up one way or the other.”

Via Adventures Inc., a tour operator that runs motor coaches through Yosemite, has reduced its number of trips to six from 10 per day, a spokeswoman said. And executives at Yosemite Concession Services, which operates all of the park’s food, gift and grocery services and recreational activities such as bike rentals and rock climbing excursions, said international tour bookings are down 30% this summer.

Karen Hales, a Yosemite Concession Services manager, said she rarely hears the usual crowds of tourists speaking several languages at the food court or inside Yosemite Lodge shops anymore. The park’s 1,500 rooms, which range from tent cabins to full-service hotel accommodations, are selling out more slowly than ever, she said.