EDITORIAL: Glacier Park, events boost tourism

Neither fire nor smoke nor drought could keep Glacier National Park from another record-breaking year.

Through November, our priceless park has already recorded its busiest year ever with 2,352,699 visitors estimated.

That’s through 11 months and surpassed last year’s high-visitor year that previously held the record.

The record year for Glacier came in spite of challenges in the late parts of the summer due to fires and smoke.

Fortunately, the local tourism industry hasn’t been content to just count on Glacier Park to attract tourists to Northwest Montana. Over the past several years, the Kalispell Convention and Visitor Bureau has added a number of events intended to boost tourism.

We knew those events were successful, but we didn’t know just how successful until last week when the Montana Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research released a study showing that the Flathead Valley had seen a combined economic impact of $6.7 million just from four events.

The Spartan Race, held in Bigfork, by itself brought in more than $4 million in tourism spending. That includes hotel stays, restaurants, shopping and everything else. The Montana Dragon Boat Festival, which moved to Lakeside this year, brought in nearly $1 million in spending by the participants and guests. A third annual event helped boost spending in the slower winter season — the Montana Pond Hockey Classic had an impact of $632,613.

It was notable that the state high school rodeo championship, which was held for the second year here, also had an impact of over $1 million. Rodeo won’t be back next year, but it shows the importance of fighting to bringing tournaments to the Flathead.

All in all, an impressive haul, and when you calculate the overall impact of nearly 2.4 million visits to Glacier Park, the numbers are staggering.