Park City Sustainable Tourism Plan

Park City and Summit County are recognized as one of the most attractive destinations in the world, drawing more than three million visitors a year to alpine trails, a historic Main Street, and two Olympic-caliber ski resorts. Tourism has been a growing industry, particularly since the region hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, and with it has come real pressure on the place and people that make the destination worth visiting, including rising vehicle traffic, growing water demand, climbing housing costs, and strain on the public lands residents call home.

Destinations across the country face a version of this same tension. Tourism growth that benefits the visitor economy can just as easily wear down the community and the environment that draw visitors in the first place. The Park City Chamber & Visitors Bureau (PCCVB) sought a comprehensive, long-range tourism plan that faced that tension head-on and a proactive stewardship approach to destination management that would hold up through future uncertainty—whether that meant a pandemic, a wildfire season, or the next decade of climate impacts. PCCVB engaged Coraggio to build a Sustainable Tourism Plan that would give the region a shared, measurable path toward growth that respects the land, the people, and the visitor experience in equal measure.

Coraggio started with evidence. A GSTC Destination Assessment, the Global Sustainable Tourism Council’s formal evaluation process, anchored the first phase of the work. An independent GSTC assessor led the assessment over three on-site days, and Coraggio supported the process throughout, coordinating an introductory workshop, stakeholder interviews, and site visits to key attractions. The result was an independent, third-party baseline for the destination’s sustainability performance that carried global credibility into every planning session that followed. Coraggio paired the assessment with a background data review, economic impact modeling from Dean Runyan Associates, and visitor location data from UberMedia to further inform planning decisions and recommended actions.

From that baseline, Coraggio built a community engagement process wide enough to earn trust across a politically and economically diverse region. More than 2,600 residents responded to a sentiment survey. A 20-member Destination Stewardship Council, representing county and city government, large and small tourism businesses, nonprofits, and residents, met over a series of working sessions to weigh competing priorities and build consensus on what the plan should protect and prioritize. Our team also hosted two public town halls to create a feedback loop, giving residents and visitors a direct line into the planning process.

The work culminated in five stewardship principles that now anchor the plan:

Coraggio documented the full plan and prepared it for formal adoption. PCCVB then presented the plan to both the Park City Council and the Summit County Council, securing endorsement from each governing body.

The result is Utah’s first community-based Sustainable Tourism Plan. It translates the five stewardship principles into seven measurable objectives, each with its own indicators, initiatives, and guidance on where to source the data needed to track them. Ten Windsocks give PCCVB and its partners an ongoing read on current conditions, from vehicle miles traveled to affordable housing stock, and the plan aligns to international standards including the UN Sustainable Development Goals and GSTC criteria.

Strategic planning is more than a final plan deliverable; it must also create the foundation for action and implementation. Coraggio built the plan around a collective impact model that empowers PCCVB to convene the government agencies, businesses, and community groups actually responsible for acting on each objective. PCCVB reports progress regularly through an online dashboard, and that transparency has turned into momentum: more than 80 initiatives are underway across the plan’s seven objectives, including a Sustainable Tourism Grant program that funds community projects and a Sustainable Meetings & Events Toolkit that gives event planners a concrete way to reduce their footprint. Results from Park City’s National Community Survey also demonstrate momentum in key areas, with several measures moving in a positive direction between 2022 and 2025 including:

For PCCVB, the plan supports how the destination organization defines its own job. The CVB operates as a convener and steward for the destination’s long-term health and resiliency, with a governing document that gives government, business, and community partners a shared reason to act together instead of separately. PCCVB has reported the following progress to date on each of the initiatives within its seven objectives: