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Starting tomorrow, international visitors will have to pay more to enter 11 popular national parks. The Trump administration calls this one of its latest America First policies. Rachel Cohen, from the Mountain West News Bureau, reports from a town that was built around park visitors.
RACHEL COHEN, BYLINE: Gary Hall, the mayor of Estes Park, Colorado, says there's a lot to see and do here.
GARY HALL: There's a really old 5 and 10 cent-type shop. And that has everything.
COHEN: There's the iconic Stanley Hotel and a 90-year-old saltwater taffy shop. But the main attraction is Rocky Mountain National Park. Starting January 1, non-U.S. residents visiting the park will have to pay more than the current $35 per vehicle for a week-long pass, an additional $100 per person. That also applies at parks including Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum explained the change in a social media video.
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DOUG BURGUM: Ensures they contribute their fair share to help preserve and maintain these treasured places.
COHEN: Around 14 million international visitors toured national parks in 2018, according to the U.S. Travel Association. In prior years, the U.K., China and Germany were their top home countries. Hall worries the higher fees send them the wrong message.
HALL: We don't really like you, but if you want to come, you can pay a whole bunch of extra money. I mean, that's what it feels like.
COHEN: Mckenzie McMillan thinks the surcharge could backfire. He's with a travel agency called The Travel Group based in Vancouver, Canada.
MCKENZIE MCMILLAN: International travelers, they're spending significant more money per day in destination than domestic travelers are. So it's perplexing that they would put up a barrier to international visitors.
COHEN: But McMillan says the higher park fees aren't top of mind for many of his clients, partly because interest in traveling to the U.S. has already dropped sharply starting, he says, after President Trump's talk of making Canada the 51st state. But Tate Watkins says the fees could help parks. He works for the Property and Environment Research Center, which describes itself as a free-market conservation nonprofit. Watkins says the added revenue could chip away at the billions of dollars in park maintenance backlogs.
TATE WATKINS: It means that parks have more resources to help serve those people, serve them better and essentially cope with the additional strains that more people inevitably bring.
COHEN: A key study Watkins did on Yellowstone earlier this year found that raising fees could bring in $55 million a year and projected they would only decrease visitation by just over 1%. That rings true for Thomas Pemberton, owner of Estes Park Tour Guides. About 1 in 5 of his customers comes from overseas. He says the surcharge could make the park a less appealing day trip, but he doesn't expect a major hit to his business.
THOMAS PEMBERTON: If you can afford a vacation in the States for three weeks, this is a minor, little blip.
COHEN: But he's unsure how the new policy will work in practice and how it will be enforced.
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COHEN: Taffy shop owner Mark Igel packs up holiday orders of pink cinnamon, green peppermint and red-and-white candy cane taffy. He sees the new international fees as just one more hurdle.
MARK IGEL: Scheduling a visit to the park, timed entry, construction in Estes Park that every visitor has to deal with in order to come in and spend $20 on a box of taffy.
COHEN: Igel doesn't expect a dramatic impact. But he says he'll be watching to see how these America first fees play out on main streets like this.
For NPR News, I'm Rachel Cohen.
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