Last fall the U.S. Department of the Interior announced an open comment period on its proposal to increase entrance fees at many of the nation’s most popular national parks, including the flagship of Wyoming’s tourism industry: Yellowstone. The comment period ended in December, and now the National Parks Service (NPS) is working towards implementing those increases, which are expected to take effect in less than a year.
While the fee increases would certainly impact tourists driving their own vehicles, it would most severely impact road-based tour operators. According to figures provided to the Small Business Association’s Office of Advocacy by a small site-seeing charter bus business, the charter company’s commercial use authorization (CUA) for Yellowstone would jump from the current rate of $300 for a single charter bus, to $1,760 – an increase of 487 percent.
According to data from the U.S. Census, 95 percent of businesses in the scenic and sightseeing transportation industry are small business as defined by the Small Business Administration. Small businesses in this industry tend to have very small revenues and are potentially less able to sustain economic shocks. For example, over half of businesses in this industry (59 percent) have revenues of less than $500,000, and a substantial number (22 percent) have revenues of less than $100,000. Businesses of these sizes will find it very difficult to absorb the large cost increases as proposed.
The SBA’s Office of Advocacy suggested that in order to conduct a thorough review, NPS consider the economic impacts the proposed increases would have on small businesses, and consider feasible alternatives that may minimize the impact to small entities while still achieving the agency’s mission.
Possible alternatives include increasing the rates on an incremental basis, offering exemptions to rate increases for the smallest entities, or offering bundled rates so that operators do not have to pay certain fees more than once. In addition, the Office of Advocacy encourages NPS explore other means of recovering CUA costs including through appropriations funding.
In a letter to the NPS, of Office of Advocacy wrote, “These increases are not simple, nominal increases meant to overcome inflation or recover unanticipated costs. They are exorbitant in scale, in some cases nearly 800 to 900 percent more than the current costs. This large of an increase in such a short amount of time would put most small tour operators out of business.
“NPS did not provide any justification in the form of data as to why it is proposing such a drastic change to the fee structure, other than to state that it is to recover administrative costs of managing the CUAs,” the letter continued.
The letter suggested that the rationale for the fee increase be made available to the public in the proposal so that both Advocacy and small businesses can better understand why the proposal is inconsistent with previous data.
“Indeed Interior’s own solicitor general report from 2015 did not indicate that such a severe increase was needed to recoup any deficits in revenue. That report suggested that a 30 percent increase was sufficient,” the letter concluded.
