Zion Canyon has become one of the most popular tours of a National Park in America. This is probably due to the wildly successful “Find Your Park” advertising campaign that was put forth by the US Parks Department over the course of the last year. The campaign was designed to raise tourism levels at National Parks nation wide, due to sagging visitor numbers over the past decade. Through a series of television and magazine ads, the benefits of the National Parks available for visit within different sections of the United States were highlighted. The campaign succeeded in raising tourism levels at most parks, however Zion Canyon showed increases unlike the others. Zion Canyon visitor numbers exploded, making it one of the most popular and visited areas in the United States. The question remains “why did Zion benefit so much more from the campaign than other parks?” The answer is believed to be found in Zion’s geographic positioning.
Tours of Zion have to begin somewhere, as do tours of any National Park. If you do not live within a reasonable driving distance to the park you desire to visit, then you are going to have to fly to the nearest city that supports commercial air traffic. You are also going to have to secure a hotel room in that city, and probably spend a certain amount of time in that location even though you are using it as the origin of a tour of Zion. With regards to distances from Zion Canyon, Las Vegas is the nearest city that supports traffic from major airlines. Las Vegas is also home to more hotel rooms than any other city in America, providing more choices of rooms within the budget of the traveler than any other city. Las Vegas is positioned about 2.5 hours from Zion Canyon when driving, making it just about the second closest National Park to the city. When you consider all of these benefits in conjunction to the fact that Las Vegas is one of the most popular tourist destinations on earth on its own, and you can understand why so many people begin their tour of Zion Canyon by flying to Las Vegas. This way, they can get all of the benefits of any city that is within driving distance and also all of the benefits of a Las Vegas vacation as well.
So Zion is very popular now, how should you go about your tour? The easiest way to tour Zion is to contact a tour company that offers Zion tours, like we do. Our packages will generally involve Zion, Bryce and maybe a few other parks on the same trip, just so we can use the driving time to give you more for your money as far as exploration time inside the parks. It is less driving time from Zion to Bryce than it is from Las Vegas to Zion, so our thought process is to tour both and maximize the time in the parks exploring while minimizing the drive time. We take care of everything for you, including camping provisions and food. Just give us a call and we will take it from there.