Additional Information on Visitor Use in Jasper
Visitation Increase
Popular areas of Jasper National Park are seeing unprecedented visitor use.
Jasper welcomes over 2 million visitors each year, with 80% of those visitors coming during the summer months.
Visitation has gone up 20% over the last 10 years, and is expected to continue to rise.
Why carry out Visitor Use Management Planning?
This increase in visitors means that more are visiting, enjoying, and connecting with Jasper. However, increasing visitation also presents several challenges:
- Almost half of visitors feel that areas they visit are crowded.
- 1 in 5 visitors feel that traffic and congestion affect their experience.
- In 2023, parking lots at popular destinations like Maligne Canyon, Pyramid Beach, and Lake Annette were at or over capacity on 100% of warm sunny days.
- Incidents of human-wildlife conflict are increasing: The number of incidents went up 40% between 2014 and 2023.
Sources: 2018 Visitor Information Program Survey, data collected for the JasperNow system, which updates visitors on parking lot availability, and the Human-Wildlife Coexistence Incident Event Management System - statistics presented here exclude incidents related to fruit trees, rail mortalities, and grain attractants.
Increasing visitation also presents challenges for natural and cultural resource protection, timeliness of emergency response, evacuation timing in emergency situations, and infrastructure capacity.
These challenges create negative experiences for Jasper visitors and residents alike.
As visitation has been increasing, it is now timely to undertake visitor use management planning to review past approaches - and consider new ones - to determine how best to address these challenges in a way that protects resources while providing high-quality experiences.
Who is "the Jasper Visitor"?
Every 5 years, Parks Canada surveys visitors to collect information about them and their experience in the Park. The last iteration of the survey was done in 2018, and found that:
| Origin: | Over half of visitors are from other countries. 1/5th of visitors are from Alberta. |
| Age | Most are adults; 1 in 5 groups travel with children. |
| Group Size | The average group size is 3. |
| Length of Stay | On average, visitors stay for 4 nights in the park. |
| Activities | 77% of visitors go for short walks and 71% visit lakes or beaches. 43% of visitors do not go for hikes over 3km. |
