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Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board Listening Tour Recap

By Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board

Thank you to everyone who participated in focus groups and community meetings from May 31–June 2.

The purpose of these meetings was to find common ground and to identify main tourism-related issues across all stakeholder groups while exploring potential solutions.

We had a high engagement that included:

  • Two one-day visioning and planning workshops with 50 public sector administrators and elected officials, public land managers, private sector representatives, NGOs and private citizens
  • Community meetings in:
    • Jackson with 90 participants including a Facebook live
    • Driggs/Victor with 15 participants including a Facebook live
  • Business & Community Focus Group with 25 different businesses
    Jackson Hole Air Board briefing with 10 business leaders
  • Interviews with Eastern European immigrant community including 6 tourism workers and 2 in the general business/service industry
  • Latinx Focus Group
  • Debrief meetings with the JHTTB and SDMP Steering Committee and Elected Officials

Our tour revealed the following common themes among all stakeholders:

  • Lack of coordinated and holistic visitor management systems across all administrative entities: Public lands, town, county, businesses and other tourism attractions
  • Need for consistent visitor education and communications about responsible behavior
  • Transportation, traffic, and parking congestion in peak visitation months
  • Lack of affordable and attainable workforce housing
  • Lack of permanent organization for destination management
  • Need for a destination-level, coordinated system for collecting and reviewing tourism sustainability data, interpreting impacts and issuing regular reports to the public
  • Tourism workforce shortages
  • No collaborative climate adaptation efforts for residential and visitor engagement and education

Our next steps include:

  • Further development of priority initiatives with stakeholders this summer
  • Release of Situational Analysis
  • Community opportunity to weigh in on the final set of priority solutions via the Teton County Engage platform (arriving soon)
  • Delivery and validation of Sustainable Destination Management Plan draft (Fall 2022)

Please email the JHTTB’s Sustainability Coordinators (staywild@tetoncountywy.gov) with questions, concerns, ideas and to request a meeting for you or your organization.