Visitation, Revenue per visitor, Average Hours of Visitor Stays

2000

Source:  LSO Analysis of SPACR data.

Revenue per visitor can be used as a rough gauge for compliance.  However, revenue is impacted by factors other than compliance, such as volume of visitors, length of stay, and the type of fees charged.    LSO compared revenue per visitor for the parks charging camping and daily-use fees and found there may be indications of lower compliance at Boysen and Hawk Springs.  Boysen and Hawk Springs have lower revenues per visitor while having an average length of stay per visitor that is similar to other parks. 

There are some caveats to this analysis, and the revenue per visitor number should be considered with caution.  The measure of revenue per visitor is problematic because SPHS reports its visitation statistics are unreliable, since individual parks and sites do not always collect visitation data in a uniform manner.  These issues with visitation statistics could distort the revenue per visitor measure used in this analysis.  While SPHS reports its visitation numbers are not uniform, they do believe the year-to-year comparison is valid and the visitation numbers are generally useful in understanding volume of visitors at a particular location.

SPHS has developed a computer software program that relates raw data regarding car counts to the results of a 1997 visitor survey which yielded information about how many visitors are in a car, how many times the car goes over a counter, and the number of days visitors stay, plus other information.  This is how SPHS has produced visitation and visitor day statistics.  LSO calculated “average hours of visitor stay” by using SPHS’s figure for “visitor days,” which is 12 visitor hours accumulated continuously or simultaneously by one or more visitor, dividing by visitors, and multiplying by 12 hours.