PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A new report and interactive map from the National Park Service shows tourists visiting national parks brought in $1.2 billion in Arizona last year.
“Arizona’s national park sites are really a national treasure for us in our state and we are fortunate that we have so many,” said Josh Coddington, the communications director with Arizona Office of Tourism.
Arizona is home to 22 national park sites, so it should be no surprise that they are a big boost to our state economy.
The Grand Canyon has the biggest economic impact in our state with visitors spending $738 million there in 2023.
“Those smaller communities, the main thing they have is tourism,” said Coddington. “The activities in their towns and people who live, businesses that are there”.
The report also breaks down jobs. Tourism at the parks supported 17,300 jobs in Arizona, with more than half supporting visitors to the Grand Canyon.
Data also shows that total visitor spending to the parks have pretty much rebounded to pre-pandemic numbers.
In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, total visitor spending for Arizona’s national parks was nearly cut in half to $712 million, compared to $1.3 billion in 2019.
See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it.
Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here with a brief description.
Copyright 2024 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66e26bf80a7845dab4a8c40fc8f4c417&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kold.com%2F2024%2F09%2F12%2Ftourism-arizonas-national-parks-brought-12-billion-state-economy-2023%2F&c=18237464234549826374&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-09-11 13:57:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.