Hallet's Peak reflected in Lake Haiyaha at dawn in Rocky Mountain National Park. Credit: National Park Service
National Park Permit Rushes Appear to Favor Higher-Income ZIP Codes
In A Nutshell
- In the most competitive permit sales, reservation holders came from ZIP codes with typical incomes about 3% to 6% higher than same-day bookers.
- Booking up to 90 days ahead was linked to ZIP-code incomes $3,254 to $3,830 higher than same-day bookings.
- Yosemite’s changing booking windows suggest the timing of permit sales shapes who gets a permit, not just visitor preference.
- Income was measured by neighborhood, not by person, and fixes like lotteries and staggered releases remain untested.
Trying to snag an entry permit for Yosemite during peak summer or a sunrise slot at Acadia’s Cadillac Mountain can feel like fighting for concert tickets. Permits can vanish within minutes, and a new analysis of reservation data from seven national parks finds that this scramble, along with how far ahead permits are released, is linked to visitors from higher-income areas.
Economist Jonathan E. Hughes of the University of Colorado Boulder dug into reservation records from Acadia, Arches, Glacier, Haleakalā, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain and Yosemite National Parks between 2021 and 2024. His analysis, published in Nature Communications, compared people who won permits in fiercely contested sales, or who booked far in advance, with people who reserved on the same day.
Parks logged 331.9 million visits in 2024 alone. Online reservation systems are meant to protect trails, campgrounds, and wildlife from too much foot traffic, but the paper warns they may unintentionally make it harder for lower-income visitors to get in.
Over 90% of Acadia’s Day-Ahead Sunrise Permits Went in Five Minutes
At Acadia, more than 90% of day-ahead sunrise permits for Cadillac Mountain were claimed within five minutes of going on sale. Rocky Mountain National Park saw 60% to 80% of day-ahead permits go that fast in 2023 and 2024. Day-ahead permits are released shortly before a visit, while advance permits go on sale weeks or months earlier. Hughes used the five-minute claim rate as his measure of how competitive a sale was.
He pulled booking records from the Recreation Information Database, the federal database that holds Recreation.gov reservation records, covering eleven reservation programs across the seven parks. Timestamps showed how fast permits sold and how far ahead each person booked. Because booking data does not include personal income, he matched each visitor’s ZIP code to the typical household income for that area, using the American Community Survey, a federal survey. The income figures therefore describe a visitor’s neighborhood, not the visitor. He also adjusted for seasons, weekends, and holidays.
National Park Reservations Favored Higher-Income ZIP Codes in Competitive Sales and Early Bookings
In the most competitive advance sales, where most permits vanished within five minutes, reservation holders’ ZIP codes had typical incomes $3,200 to $4,200 higher than those of same-day bookers, a difference of about 4% to 5%. In the toughest day-ahead sales, the gap was $2,700 to $5,000, or roughly 3% to 6%. Less competitive sales generally showed smaller gaps.
Booking far ahead showed a pattern too. Reservations made up to 90 days before a trip came from ZIP codes with typical incomes $3,254 to $3,830 higher than same-day bookings. The gap narrowed for bookings made even earlier but did not disappear.
Yosemite offered a real-world test, since managers changed its advance-booking window between 2021 and 2024, at one point pushing it out to as much as 240 days. Stretching the window from 30 days to 180 days went along with holders’ ZIP codes having typical incomes roughly $3,150 to $3,600 higher. Because the park itself changed the rules, the result supports the idea that the length of the booking window helps shape who ends up with a permit.
Rocky Mountain National Park offered another clue. In 2021, managers found that about a third of reservation holders were not showing up, so on July 1 they roughly doubled daily permits from 600 to 1,200. Competition fell from about 85% to about 70%, and holders’ ZIP-code incomes dropped by about $2,000 afterward. Adding permits, in short, coincided with less of a tilt toward higher-income areas.
Visitor Preference Likely Does Not Fully Explain the National Park Reservation Gap
One possible explanation is that wealthier visitors simply prefer booking ahead while lower-income visitors prefer spontaneity. The gaps held up after Hughes accounted for travel distance and enthusiasm for outdoor recreation, and the Yosemite rule changes point to more than preference alone.
Hughes also notes that a preference for booking ahead only becomes a fairness problem if it keeps lower-income visitors from getting permits later. Even permits set aside for people who prefer not to plan months out can turn into five-minute rushes. The paper points to internet access, digital know-how, and flexible work schedules as possible reasons such sales favor higher-income users, though the study did not measure any of them.
Park Managers Could Test Lotteries and Staggered Permit Releases
Reservation systems can protect fragile places, and the paper does not dispute that. The income gaps appear modest, but Hughes points out that both park managers and visitors react strongly to systems that feel unfair. He suggests parks could experiment with how many permits go on sale in advance versus day-ahead, stagger releases, or use lotteries, though which fix works best remains untested. Protecting a trail should not also mean sidelining visitors who may find it harder to plan far ahead or compete in a fast-moving online sale, and managers who want to avoid that will need to treat the income gap as a design problem, not a footnote.
Disclaimer: This article reports on the findings of a single peer-reviewed study and is intended for general informational purposes. The results describe statistical associations and may not apply to every park, permit system, or individual. It is not professional, financial, or policy advice.
Paper Notes
Limitations
Hughes’s study relies on ZIP-code-level median household income rather than each visitor’s actual income, since personal income is not recorded in the reservation data. Averaging income across a ZIP code can distort results, a statistical issue known as the “ecological fallacy,” because a reservation holder’s neighborhood may not reflect their own finances. The author ran additional checks indicating that the individual-level relationship likely points the same direction as the ZIP-code findings, but the exact size of those individual effects could not be confirmed. The results show associations between competition, advance booking, and higher neighborhood income, not proof of cause. Internet speed, digital know-how, and job flexibility are discussed as possible explanations but were not measured. International visitors, about 2% of the raw data, were excluded because their incomes are unavailable. The analysis also covers 2021 through 2024 at seven national parks with general reservation systems, excluding systems for specialized activities such as technical hiking routes, so results may not extend to every park or permit type.
Funding and Disclosures
Publication of the paper was funded by the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries Open Access Fund. The author declared no competing interests.
Publication Details
Titled “Reservation policies and equity in national park access,” the paper was written by Jonathan E. Hughes of the Department of Economics and the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. It was published online on July 29, 2026, in Nature Communications (2026, volume 17, article 10109) and is available at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-76030-4.
