A local’s take on why GSMNP attendance dropped in 2024
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Attendance in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was down in 2024 as compared to 2023 or even 2022 or 2021. The last time attendance in the Smokies was that low was in 2020, the year of COVID-19. But we must choose our words a little more carefully. So low? Was it? Well, it was one of the lowest attendance totals in the last six years. But it was also the sixth-highest in the history of the park. So maybe, to borrow a bit of wisdom from Obi-Wan Kenobi, attendance was only low in the mountains if you look at it from a certain point of view.
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How much did attendance drop?
It dropped significantly, by more than 1.1 million visitors year over year. The attendance in 2023 was 13,297,648 and dropped in 2024 to 12,191,833. For reference, here are the previous numbers going back to 2018.
2022 – 12,937,635
2021 – 14,161,549
2020 – 12,095,720
2019 – 12,547,743
2018 – 11,421,203
Placed in that lineage, 2024 isn’t all that far out of line with the last several years. The year 2021 appears to be a bit of an outlier – probably because people were itching to get outside post-Covid. But it seems anything above 12 million people seems pretty good. Again, it’s the sixth-highest attendance in the park’s history so it doesn’t seem the sky is falling.
What is going on?
My first inclination was that the remnants of Hurricane Helene were part of the issue, but the numbers don’t bear that out. The Hurricane hit on Sept. 27, meaning it would only have four or five days affected by the storm. September was down nearly 300,000 visitors. Some of this can be connected to the storm but not all. Now, I would think that October – down nearly 200,000 visitors – was most likely due to the storm, Still, the lion’s share of the losses came through the summer months as June, July and August represented a deficit of more the 550,000 visitors combined.
So, while the storm accounts for some of the deficit, it doesn’t explain the larger phenomenon. So, that still leaves the question.
Why was travel to the Smokies down in 2024?
My second thought was the economy. After all, the Smokies are thick with breakfast-only joints. Maybe the cost of eggs and everything was keeping the travelers at home. But no, from what I’ve been able to discover online, vacation travel in general was up in 2024. If the economy is hurting American wallets, it hasn’t been enough, apparently to stop them from vacationing. Of course, that’s not a very nuanced take. Maybe if we delved further into demographics and travel habits, we might find the visitors who frequent the Smokies might be the very folks being hit the hardest by the economic downtown. But that’s a guess. I didn’t find much science behind that thought.
I think the most likely answer is the simplest. It’s a little cyclical. After a record-setting 2021 and 2023 that nearly matched it, 2024 was bound to be somewhat less. Maybe more people who have vacationed in the mountains the last couple of years decided to head to the beach or Orlando or New Orleans or Branson. The graph of visitors to the Smokies isn’t a straight line, increasing ever upward. There are peaks and valleys, like everything else. Maybe, just maybe, 2024 took a little dip because the year before was a success of nearly unprecedented proportions.
The real answer is probably a bit of all of the above. There was a natural inclination for some folks to explore other vacation options, the economy took a bite out of the summer and then the storm turned a dip into a drop.
What about 2025?
We don’t know yet. January numbers haven’t been released and even if they were, I’m not sure they’ll tell the story for the year. If I were a betting man, I’d expect a bit of an uptick just based on the general trajectory of one year to the next. Economic worries could lead people who were exploring more expensive vacations to “settle” for a relatively cheaper mountain getaway. Or they could lead to more staycations while people squirrel away a little extra savings.
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