No Showed: National Parks, Shutdowns, And Local Economies

A short episode this week on the quite unique, very sad U.S. government approach to tourism and park spaces. How much money are the parks losing, how much are the towns around the parks losing? And what's going on with international visitors, Brand USA, and U.S. passports. We are fired up!

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:06):
Jeff, weren't you talking like about a week ago
that you were going to head outand see some of the national
parks in October?

SPEAKER_01 (00:15):
Yeah, I was.
Um, Mammoth Cave National Park,Hot Springs, Ozark National
Forest, National Parks.
I've been to Mammoth.

SPEAKER_00 (00:23):
I have not been to Hot Springs.
Well, how were they?
So give me a little give me alittle the the info on them.

SPEAKER_01 (00:28):
Oh, I can describe them thoroughly over the next 10
seconds, Matt.
I can boil it every detail of myexperience into the next 10
seconds.
Are you ready?
Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 (00:43):
Wow, that that sounds amazing.
That blank silence.

SPEAKER_01 (00:49):
Well, I believe you were headed on a special trip to
see national parks also in NorthDakota.

SPEAKER_00 (00:54):
Yes, Badlands, Wind Cave, Roosevelt.

SPEAKER_01 (00:57):
Tell me, tell me, give me every detail of the
national parks this month.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, bring it.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02):
Okay, here it is.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
Riveting.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09):
I know.
Listeners, you may have noticedthat there are some blank spaces
in what we're talking about, andthat's because there's been a
government shutdown.
You may have read about this inthe news.
And what happens in a governmentshutdown?
The first images you see inpapers and media, any kind of
media representation of theshutdown, it's the national
parks are closed.

(01:30):
Ah, our jewels like Yosemite andYellowstone closed down.
Think of the children.
Think of our stewardship of theearth.
And it's used as a politicalpinata, as are many things.
But the national parks are aparticularly useful tool for
media and for politicians totalk about government stalemate,

(01:51):
and it drives us absolutelybananas.
Now, here's the good news theNational Park Service is
actually still very much alive.
More than 350 of our nationalpark units out of about 430,
433, something like that, arefunctioning in some way or
another.
You can still visit them.
There are a lot of trails thatare still open.

(02:12):
Part of that is due to a robustand very committed volunteer
service.
I was just out at Devil's Towerin Wyoming about a week ago, and
the volunteers were doing theirbest to kind of help out the few
rangers that are left there.
Like at a lot of the parks, youknow, the visitor center is shut
down, search and rescue is verylimited, trash collection is

(02:34):
very limited, fee collection isnon-existent.
You see a lot of rule breaking,like people bringing dogs out.
That's a big no-no, basejumping, but you will see law
enforcement.
They've kept those on inemergency capacity just so that
people just don't start runningwild and chopping down trees and
going crazy out there.
The real issue here with thisshutdown, as it is with a lot of

(02:55):
things, is that it comes down tomoney.
And the NPS is estimating onemillion in fee revenue for every
day that a government shutdownkeeps the parks closed.
Up at Acadia in Maine, you know,typically the park makes about
one and a half million bucks inentrance fees alone in the month

(03:16):
of October.
And so all that revenue is gone.
And, you know, the park systemalready runs on a shoestring
because it gets cut and cut andcut.
Again, political pinata.
Everybody likes to tout it asAmerica's best idea, but we
never like to fund it.
So here we are, stuck with thesewith this situation in DC and uh

(03:36):
these spaces that uh need ourcare more than ever.

SPEAKER_01 (03:41):
It's not just the parks, uh revenues that are lost
here.
Most of these parks aren'tnaturally out on their own.
The local communities aroundthem, those local economies, are
suffering big time.
The NPCA, the National ParksConservation Association, uh put
a number out that they estimate80 million a day lost to those
local economies that exist toservice park visitors.

(04:05):
In 2013, when we had a 16-dayshutdown, it was estimated that
400 million was lost in visitorspending during that period of
time.
So uh, while our governmentcan't figure out how to operate,
it's not just its own revenuesuh that are that are suffering
here.
Uh it is the local economiesthat rely on the parks to be
serviced and open.

(04:25):
And local experience is youknow, people like me and you,
Matt, who are out there planningvacations in October to go see
our national parks.

SPEAKER_00 (04:33):
And here we are.
Like schmucks.
I don't know why we're doingthis.

SPEAKER_01 (04:36):
Knocking on the door.

SPEAKER_00 (04:38):
Hello, let us in.
And yeah, I mean, there are athousand towns out there that
are essentially like the town inJaws, like Amity Island.
They depend on the tourist for,I mean, like one month out of
the year pays for the entireyear.
It keeps businesses afloat.

SPEAKER_01 (04:56):
Right.
National parks aren't the onlygovernment-induced travel
problem here, right?
The administration's war on thetravel industry all year long.
Uh let's shift the conversationto international arrivals,
right?
Industry has seen Americaninbound travel visitation,
August year date down twopercent year over year.

(05:16):
Uh that excludes land arrivalsfrom Canada and Mexico, who are
our largest travel tradepartners.
Uh, and it would be far worsethan down two percent if we were
to include Canada and Mexico aswell.
And when we look at thecountries that aren't coming,
Denmark down 70%, Canada byflight, down 59%, Germany,

(05:36):
right?
Let's start actually just let'sstart with the first two.
Denmark and Canada.
Why are those countries down 70and 60 percent in travel to the
United States?
I don't know, Matt.
Maybe it's because we told themwe would annex them.
I don't know.
It doesn't go over well in thehome country.
Uh Germany down 50%, right?
I mean, the whole there are 10countries that are down uh 40%

(05:57):
or more.
Uh globally, the average is 37%fewer people desiring to come to
the United States.
The government is not helpingthis industry.

SPEAKER_00 (06:10):
For all the reportage of the shutdown, you
know, they go to real red meattopics like manufacturing and
consumer goods.
I see news stories about howtravel is down, but I don't see
stories about how governmentpolicy and the whims of the
government are affectingtourism.
And I wonder why that's not astory.

(06:32):
I wonder if everybody's scared.
Yeah.
Or I don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 (06:38):
What I do have confidence in saying is that the
US government does not careabout the travel industry.
That's very clear.
Our inbound travel to the US is80% of what it was in 19.
Our reputation has neverrecovered.
This is a good time to mentionthis is a bipartisan problem.
It's being exacerbated rightnow.
But our government is one of thevery few that doesn't have a

(07:00):
ministry of tourism, forexample, right?
We don't try, as big as thisindustry is, to bring people
into the US.

SPEAKER_00 (07:08):
I wonder why.
I wonder if we've just had it sogood for so long and we assume
that everybody wants to visithere.
An increasingly suspectassumption.

SPEAKER_01 (07:17):
I think it's easy for any government, anytime
around the world, and frankly,in the course of history, to
whip up demand for its ownagenda by pointing the finger at
external forces.
Right, right.
Always been true, and it willremain true.
The short-term nature of ourgovernment's thinking is

(07:38):
particularly damaging to thetravel industry that relies on
people to want to come here.

SPEAKER_00 (07:44):
To wit, Jeff.
This year the U.S.
has banned citizens from a bunchof countries entirely and made
getting a visa significantlymore difficult and expensive,
even for our so-called allies,used to be allies.
There's now a$250 visa integrityfee enacted this year.
And that sounds so that soundsso much like a thing an airline

(08:05):
would charge, or like a resortfee.
And although this fee isrefundable, its implementation
can only deter visitors.
The U.S.
National Parks instituted aforeign visitors fee this year.

SPEAKER_01 (08:18):
So all these fees, it's like how much more clearly
can you tell visitors to stayaway?
Exactly.
Through a dozen differentpolicies.
The federal government has toldthe rest of the world to fuck
off, right?
Uh U.S.
domestic travel business isfeeling that pain because people
don't want to accompany a placethat's so unwelcoming.

SPEAKER_00 (08:34):
One of our obsessions here is tracking
passports for the first time inthe 20-year history of the
Henley Passport Index.
The U.S.
is no longer amongst the 10 mostpowerful passports in the world.
We have fallen to 12th.
The index measures the number ofcountries a traveler can visit
without needing a visa.
Singapore's first, and it'sfollowed pretty immediately by

(08:56):
South Korea and Japan.
Afghanistan is last.

SPEAKER_01 (09:00):
Now we're trending toward Afghanistan, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 (09:03):
We are.
We are 12th.
You know, we're still top 20,but I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 (09:10):
At least the Taliban's got a visit
Afghanistan campaign.
In 2014, U.S.
passport ranked number one.
It wasn't that long ago.
And it has fallen steadily everyyear since.
The recent Henley reportattributes the tumble in part to
the Trump administration'simmigration policy.
That's not a shock.
Uh, but countries like Brazil,for example, have also removed

(09:30):
U.S.
travelers from its visa-freelist due to a lack of
reciprocity.
So holding the passport you andI have is no longer nearly as
easy to move around the world.

SPEAKER_00 (09:40):
Even our stabs at trying to have an official
government tourism entity aregoing nowhere.
Our marketing agency, whichshould be hard at work promoting
inbound travel from overseas,it's called brand USA, and it's
had 80% of its budget strippedaway.
And I think that happened likein April of this year.

(10:01):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (10:02):
The ESTA fees, right?
Those are the costs thatforeigners pay to arrive.
Uh those doubled.
So since these fees arespecifically earmarked to fund
brand USA, they've doubled thecollection and cut the funding.
Huh.

SPEAKER_00 (10:18):
Curious.
Uh, funding crisis or not, brandUSA is launching a global
campaign called America theBeautiful, and it's highlighting
American beaches, nationalparks, and cities.
And there's a warm narratoroffering travelers, quote, this
great big open arms hug of aland that has also, quote, a

(10:39):
million moments to offer.
Indeed, it does.
I feel many of those millionmoments uh every day.

SPEAKER_01 (10:46):
I felt them at our national parks last month.
Good luck, right?
Yes.
This is what we should be doing.
We should be out marketing,visit the U.S., and especially
our biggest gems, these parks.
But good luck, right?
I mean, let's any tagline wouldbe better for tourism than
America First.
It's a pretty big middle fingerof the rest of the world.
Uh through a dozen differentpolicies, a few that we've named

(11:09):
already, uh, we've told the restof the world to go away.
Our businesses are feeling apain for it.
I mean, again, as a reminder, myloathing for both parties is
equal.
Uh, we we don't have aneffective government that works
for Americans.
Uh and I believe they've stoppedcollecting Matt.
Have they stopped collectingtaxes during the shutdown?
Are you still paying taxes?

SPEAKER_00 (11:30):
I am.

SPEAKER_01 (11:30):
Yeah, I am true.
I am true.

SPEAKER_00 (11:33):
As you can tell, everybody, we're fired up.
Why?
Because we love this country andwe love its beauty, and uh we
deserve better, folks.
I think that should be our new.
I think that maybe brand USAshould have that as the new
motto.
We deserve better, everybody.
I could get I can actually kindof get behind that.

(11:53):
If you do get a chance to getout there and check your local
listings, because I feel a fewbrave souls are are are keeping
the flame alive.
And I think we need we need tosupport these spaces now more
than ever.