South Dakota Not Breaking Visitor Records

On Friday, Governor Kristi Noem exhorted people to “Join me in continuing to support our robust tourism industry” and “welcome and encourage every visitor to experience the Great Faces and Great Places of South Dakota.” When she published that note, Noem herself was not in South Dakota to welcome any visitors; she was supporting Arizona’s robust tourism industry by hosting her daughter Kennedy’s destination wedding at a resort in Sedona where rooms cost over a thousand dollars a night.

South Dakota tourism entrepreneur John Tsitrian was able to recover from the hilarity sooner than I was and start fact-checking Noem’s claim that she—well, South Dakota, but l’état, c’est moi!— was “Breaking Tourism Records”. Tsitrian checks in with this information on apparent declines in tourism activity at big Black Hills attractions:

Noem’s assessment of tourism in 2022 isn’t supported by visitation numbers in this region. FWIW, Mt. Rushmore has slightly bucked the downside trend of visitations to most NPS sites in western SD, western ND and northeastern WY. Through Sept, Rushmore is up 1.8%, Badlands NP is down 17%, Wind Cave is down 14%, Minuteman Missile site down 3.3%, Devils Tower down 13%, Theodore Roosevelt NP down 16%. Jewel Cave joins Rushmore in bucking the trend, up 40%, but from a very small base that I believe was affected by repair work closures. Also, garbage tonnage hauled out of Sturgis after this year’s rally was down 11% [John Tsitrian, comment, under “Governor Kristi Noem: Breaking Tourism Records,” Dakota Free Press, 2022.10.08].

Tsitrian’s report of less trash at the Sturgis Rally aligns with previous reports of lower attendance and lower tax revenues.

Noem takes the following gratuitous partisan swipe at the President in her tourism pitch:

Despite the Biden Administration’s crushing inflation, visitors are still finding a way to make the trip to South Dakota. Tourism numbers are largely down across the country this year, which makes South Dakota’s record-breaking pace all the more impressive! [Gov. Kristi Noem, weekly propaganda, sent from Arizona, 2022.10.07]

The National Park Service report from which Tsitrian draws his numbers shows that inflation, whether it really belongs to the Biden Administration or to the macroeconomic disruptions unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic and our recovery therefrom, isn’t crushing tourism at America’s national parks. The six NPS attractions in South Dakota have seen 4.11% fewer visitors so far this year than in the first three quarters of 2021, and the NPS Midwest region as a whole has seen 4.11% fewer visitors to national parks and monuments. Tourism is also down in the Intermountain region that stretches from Montana down to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas by 12.46%. However, visits to NPS sites in all six other regions are up, from 2.90% in Alaska to 13.74% in the Northeast. Nationally, NPS visitors are up 2.09% so far from 2021:

South Dakota NPS Sites	YTD2021	YTD2022	%chg
Badlands NP	1,125,748	936,614	-16.80%
Jewel Cave NM	104,696	148,979	42.30%
Minuteman Missile NHS	128,284	103,844	-19.05%
Missuori NRR	113,628	155,961	37.26%
Mount Rushmore NMEM	2,213,113	2,252,740	1.79%
Wind Cave NP	647,443	556,885	-13.99%
SD Total	4,332,912	4,155,023	-4.11%
Region	YTD2021	YTD2022	%chg
Alaska	963,446	991,375	2.90%
Intermountain	46,862,125	41,023,021	-12.46%
Midwest	21,052,710	20,057,397	-4.73%
National Capital	31,361,771	34,470,523	9.91%
Northeast	35,576,765	40,464,685	13.74%
Pacific West	45,016,868	46,882,392	4.14%
Southeast	53,468,193	55,319,864	3.46%
Total	234,301,878	239,209,257	2.09%

Visits to NPS sites nationwide peaked in 2016 at 330,971,689 and won’t hit that record this year. But, contrary to Noem’s assertion, visitors aren’t coming to South Dakota’s national parks at a record-breaking pace, either.

By the way, 50% of NPS visits in 2021 came from the 25 most popular NPS sites, ranging from the Blue Ridge Parkway at 15.9 million to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area at 3.1 million. South Dakota’s top NPS site, Mount Rushmore, was not among those top 25. So far this year, Mount Rushmore ranks 33rd for visits, behind the Statue of Liberty (31st), Yellowstone National Park (28th, but suffering a 45% decline due to those June floods wiping out the north entrance), the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (23rd), the Grand Canyon (11th), the Lincoln Memorial (6th, and up 38% this year), the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (2nd), and the Blue Ridge Parkway (1st, up 6.5%).

Noem had to cherry-pick her metrics to pretend that South Dakota tourism is breaking records. The South Dakota Department of Tourism Mile Marker newsletter for September includes Kirk Hulstein’s analysis of travel indicators showing that tourism spending and air arrivals in South Dakota this year through August were up 14% but South Dakota had 1% fewer visitors and 6% fewer park visitors. Our room nights are up 1% year to date,  but our hotel room nights were down all summer from 2021:

Visits to South Dakota from Canadians and Mexicans dropped in 2020 to 27% of their 2019 level; visits from other foreigners dropped that first coronavirus year to 27% of the 2019 level. Hulstein projects Canadian and Mexican visits will reach 85% of their pre-pandemic level this year and exceed 2019’s level next year; other foreign visits will only reach 52% of their pre-pandemic level this year and won’t recover from coronavirus until 2025.

The biggest broken record here is Kristi Noem herself, repeating lies to make herself look good while she herself fails to live up to her words. It’s too bad Noem won’t publish her travel schedule; we could try to arrange a record-breaking crowd to welcome her back from supporting Arizona’s tourism industry.

p.s.: Arizona’s airport passenger traffic is up 31.4%. Way to go, Kristi!