Natural sights, experiences the top draw for Wyoming
It’s a quiet state, with an average population density of just 5.85 people per square mile, making Wyoming the least densely-populated state in the contiguous USA. Only giant Alaska is less populated.
Yet Wyoming has some of the most arresting natural sights in America, including the Grand Teton mountain range, the compelling Devils Tower National Monument and the queen of the country’s national parks –Yellowstone.
The great outdoors symbolized by those places helped maintain tourism arrivals during the pandemic years, when those who could travel sought out attractions with lots of wide open spaces and no crowds. That was part of the picture of Wyoming tourism painted by Wyoming tourism reps who visited Vancouver recently.
“The pandemic really brought more tourists to Wyoming,” said Jim Wollenburg, the senior manager of global partnerships for Travel Wyoming. “We set records for arrivals by September 2020, and 2021 and 2022 were some of our best years to date.”
For instance, visitors spent US$4 billion in Wyoming in 2021, helping to generate US$243 million in tax revenue – a 50% increase over 2020. Yellowstone National Park welcomed a record number of visitors, with nearly 5 million going there. In 2023, visitors spent a record US$4.7 billion — a significant increase of 2.6% from 2022.
But domestic tourism gets most of the credit for driving these record numbers, while international tourist arrivals are still slow to recover to pre-pandemic levels. For instance, room nights are at 54% of pre-pandemic totals, and visitor spending at 43% of pre-pandemic levels, said the Wyoming Office of Tourism earlier in the year.
Hence efforts by state tourism authorities to increase the number of international tourists. For example, a Wyoming itinerary was included in the trips offered to Canadian travel agents who participated in the Brand USA Mega Fam, which ran during April of 2024. The Wyoming trip started in Colorado with visits to Denver and Fort Collins before proceeding to Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming.
“It’s a slow build,” said Wollenburg, referring to the impact that projects like the Mega Fam are having on international tourism to the state. But efforts to enlist the international travel trade in Wyoming bookings are now more focused than in the past, and that work is starting to pay off, he said.
