Survey: Montanans saw summer’s visitors as less polite
Hilary Hutcheson, a longtime flyfishing guide and flyshop owner in Columbia Falls, said she and her staff were inundated this summer with tourists who had never really experienced the outdoors before.
“A lot of not just first-time anglers, but first-time campers, first-time taking a family vacation to a national park,” she recalled. “This is anecdotalbased, but it seemed like Montana was their third choice after going to Disneyland or going to Europe. They had a big different trip planned and `see the USA in a Chevrolet’ wasn’t their first choice. But because of COVID that’s what they ended up doing.”
For the first time, Hutcheson and her staff had to make it a point to tell people that bear spray isn’t a repellent that you spray on your kids like insect repellent. They were also overwhelmed by people who had seen fly-fishing portrayed in movies like “A River Runs Through It” and wanted a full wader set-up.
The pandemic meant a flood of Americans who normally wouldn’t have ended up in Montana came to visit. And based on feedback collected this summer, Montanans still have an overall favourable view of tourists and the money they bring here, but 2020 put strains on that sentiment.
A new study from the Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research at the University of Montana has found that compared to years past, Montanans deemed visitors to be slightly less polite, less patient, less environmentally responsible and less sensitive to the “Montana way of life.”
“The general trend is there’s still really positive perceptions of tourism in the state and perceptions of visitor behaviour, but it’s just slightly lower than years past,” said Carter Bermingham, a research associate at the Institute who worked on the study with Megan Schultz.