Grand Teton National Park visitors spent almost $808 million during their vacations in 2024.

That’s according to a report on the economic impacts of national parks released by the National Park Service last month.

Teton Park’s visitor spending grew by $70 million between 2023 and 2024. The park outperformed Yellowstone National Park in visitor spending by $92 million, despite having just over 1 million fewer visitors.

The park’s higher visitor spending is due to almost $147 million more spending on lodging compared with Yellowstone. Yellowstone visitors collectively shelled out more for recreation, restaurants, groceries, gas, camping and retail. The only sectors Teton Park visitors spent more on were transportation and lodging.

Grand Teton visitors spent $385 million on lodging in 2024, about 48% of total spending. Yellowstone visitors spent $238 million on lodging, or about 34% of total spending.

Hotels in Jackson cost between $300 and $800 per night in the summer, according to Google price tracking. Hotels in Yellowstone gateway towns — such as Cody, West Yellowstone and Gardiner — cost between $135 and $430.

Teton Park supports 3,860 jobs compared with Yellowstone’s 3,560. Yellowstone has more jobs in six of the eight sectors included in the report, but Teton has 150 more jobs in retail and just over 1,000 more jobs in lodging.

Grand Teton National Park officials were not able to talk to the Jackson Hole Daily because of the government shutdown.

The report comes as Town of Jackson and Teton County electeds are leery of increasing lodging capacity.

Early last month, the Jackson Town Council unanimously rejected a developer’s plan to build a 66,000-square-foot hotel. The vote was the first time in recent memory that the council had denied a project at its sketch plan phase.

Later in September, Teton County commissioners wrote a letter to the Bridger-Teton National Forest expressing concerns about a proposed expansion of Turpin Meadow Ranch, including that the county’s Comprehensive Plan calls for a moratorium on new resorts or resort expansion.

Visitor spending increased more than Grand Teton National Park visitation between 2023 and 2024, at 9.4% and 6.2% respectively.

The larger question raised by the report is whether the growth it documents is sustainable, said Mike Geraci, board chair of the nonprofit Jackson Hole Destination Alliance and former member of the Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board.

“The NPS report captures economic throughput, not ecological or social capacity,” Geraci said.

“What these reports don’t measure is the strain that constant growth places on the systems that make the park and community work,” he added.

Strains include impacts to workforce, housing, infrastructure, services, culture and visitor experience.

Growth in visitor spending is valuable but requires investment in stewardship and capacity, plus good management, to be sustainable, Geraci said. An example of this is the volunteer ambassadors in the park and on the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

“That’s one way the community is trying to address and trying to better manage the experience,” Geraci said. “And recognizing the pressure it’s under.”

The robust economy brings in the funding that mitigates some of the impacts, Geraci said.

“It’s better to have a robust economy than not, because you have resources,” he said. “Ideally, you have the resources to address the impacts, versus a shrinking economy where those resources are diminished and it becomes harder to address the impacts.”

The report celebrating national parks’ economic contributions comes after the loss of almost 25% of Park Service staff since 2024, due to the Trump administration’s endeavors to shrink the federal workforce.

The economic benefits of parks cross partisan lines, Geraci said, adding that economic relevance is political survival.

“The gold standard for politics is economic impacts and jobs,” he said. “That’s how you get a seat at the table.”