Montana tourism spending drops in 2023

About 12.5 million people visited Montana in both 2022 and 2023. Last year those tourists spent a total of about $5.45 billion, which was down from the $5.82 billion they spent in 2022.

That’s according to the newest estimates on nonresident visitation, expenditures and economic contribution of tourists compiled by the Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research at the University of Montana. Each year, the Institute has its staff spread across the state surveying tourists to find out what they spend money on while they’re here.

“Our team has been working hard behind the scenes analyzing our 2023 data,” said Kara Grau, the assistant director of economic analysis at the institute, in the email she sent out with the report.

The institute surveyed about 10,000 nonresidents and 18,000 residents.

About 69% of Montana residents believe that the overall benefits of tourism outweigh the negative impacts, according to the survey.

Per the data, tourists spent $1.4 billion on food and beverages, $1.1 billion on lodging, $1.6 billion on transportation, $600 million on shopping and $500 million on outfitters and guides last year.

The Institute calculates that tourist spending reduces the average tax burden on every Montana household by $930 a year. Tourism businesses send about $414 million to state and local governments in the form of tax revenue, and the tourism industry supports over 48,000 jobs in Montana.

Yellowstone National Park, which is mostly in Wyoming but has entrances in Montana, saw about 4.5 million visitors. Glacier National Park saw 2.93 million visitors, and the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument welcomed 227,000 guests.

About 48% of all visitors came in the third quarter of the year last year, which is from July through September. The average travel party size was 2.3 people and tourists spent an average of five nights here.

In terms of total inflation-adjusted expenditures, tourist spending in 2023 was down about 9.3% from 2022. That reverses a trend that had been happening since the end of the pandemic. From 2020 to 2021, tourist spending jumped 53.3% as people got back into traveling after COVID. Then from 2021 to 2022, tourist spending jumped 6.1%.

In Montana, about 90% of tourists come from elsewhere in the U.S., while 8% come from Canada and 2% come from other countries.

There were about 176,000 nonresident travelers that arrived via the Missoula Montana Airport, and they collectively spent about $221.4 million. There were about 607,000 tourists that flew in through Bozeman, and they spent about $769.4 million. About 259,000 tourists arrived at the airport in Kalispell and they spent $294.9 million.

The release of the report coincided with the 2024 Montana Governor’s Conference on Tourism, being held April 14-16 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Missoula.

Hundreds of visitors from across the state are here to talk about everything from the importance of agriculture to tourism to shifts in social media use.

Racene Friede, the president and CEO of Western Montana’s Glacier Country, said her organization worked with other destination nonprofits in the state to come up with a new website called Glaciers to Geysers, in order to promote everything Montana has to offer. The goal was to give people ideas on things to do when they were traveling between Glacier National Park and Yellowstone.

“We took a little bit of a different approach,” Friede said. “It was all about niche markets. And we started off with I believe it was snowmobiling and we (added) museums and hot springs and winter sports and motorcycling. But this is a whole independent site, it is supported with paid advertising that we invest in and push traffic to the site to sell. But it is also building tourism. This has been an exciting project and over the last 12 months we had 538,000 users.”

The tourism conference is open to registered guests. For more information, visit Brand.mt.gov/Events/Governors-Conference/.