In 2017, 331 million park visitors spent an estimated $18.2 billion in local gateway regions while visiting National Park Service lands across the country. These expenditures supported a total of 306 thousand jobs, $11.9 billion in labor income, $20.3 billion in value added, and $35.8 billion in economic output in the national economy.
Source: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/vse.htm
Additional Highlights:
- 50.75% of visitor spending is on hotels and restaurants
- Recreational Industries represents 1.8billions dollars spent, or 9.97% of overall spending.
- Secondary Effects account for more than 50% of labor income, value added and economic output categories.