While Park County’s lodging tax receipts were up 3% in July over last year, statewide receipts are expected to slip, said Quinten Blair, Park County Travel Council board member and representative to the state board. 

“The sky isn’t falling but it is raining a little bit,” he said of the state as a whole. “I would anticipate we’ll see, especially in the latter half of the summer, the visitation has softened.”

He said collections have been good to this point in the summer, but from what he’s heard from the tourism boards he sits on, in many areas the softening is happening earlier than in Park County. 

Mike Keller, general manager at Yellowstone’s Xanterra Parks and Resorts, said visitation in the Park has softened recently. 

It’s not just a regional issue — Travel Council Marketing Director Katrina Southern said Las Vegas is down 11% in tourism this year.

Board chair John Parsons said in talking with people in Jackson, tourism is also down there this year, although for Jackson that still represents a huge tourist presence. 

Blair said the state tourism budget is robust enough to handle a downturn this year. 

The state takes 3% of lodging tax collected and returns the rest to the counties that earned it.

For now though, lodging tax receipts still look good locally. For July, the start of the new fiscal year, the county collected a net of $865,493, up from $840,754 in July of 2024.