Zion Canyon National Park is one of the most popular protected spaces in the United States to visit and explore. No more than a few years ago, many National Parks were having some difficulty with dropping visitor numbers, and governmental pressures to commit resources to spaces that had low tourism numbers. Basically, politicians were hesitant to give money to programs that would keep the parks in good repair, clean and staffed, due to sagging numbers of tourists visiting the areas. The response was an advertising campaign called “Find Your Park” that utilized television and magazine ads to illustrate the beauty of these protected spaces. The response was overwhelmingly successful, and tourism to the National Parks marketed skyrocketed. Zion Canyon National Park, however, saw far more of an increase in interest than others did. This can only lead people involved in the tourism industry to speculate on why. The answer might actually be found in the park’s geographic location.
Zion is roughly 2.5 hours drive from Las Vegas. While that may seem like a lot, it is actually about half the distance from Las Vegas as many of the other parks that were advertised like Bryce and Monument Valley. While most tour operators like ourselves will offer the tour of Zion as part of trips that visit multiple parks, many people will simply drive to Zion on their own. This is the reason behind the increases in tourist activity at the areas, and the best guess as to why Zion became so much more popular than the other parks is because it is the closest to a major city like Las Vegas, where people can take a commercial flight into and find a hotel room easily. Other nearly cities like Salt Lake City do not have as good of flight schedules and ticket prices due to their being less interest in the flights, and the hotel and restaurant choices in Salt Lake City are not as plentiful as in Las Vegas. Lastly, Las Vegas is a tourist destination on it’s own, so it is assumed that people are booking Las Vegas vacations and taking a day or so out of the trip to visit Zion as well.
Taking a guided tour of Zion gives you some distinct advantages over trying to drive there yourself. First and foremost, you can rest while we take care of the driving, and conserve your energy for exploring the beauty of Zion. Second, our guides know Zion better than other guides do, which gives you an advantage taking one of our tours in that we are going to make sure we see the most interesting places. Lastly, our tours are “immersive” which means that you do not just watch the scenery go by through a bus window. We actually explore the park, and allow our customers to do the things they want to do as opposed to just seeing the sights. If you want to hike, photograph or just sit and take in the scenery, the choice is up to you. Explore Zion on a Bindlestiff Tour today.