Many foreign citizens and their leaders expressed confusion and general unhappiness following numerous and often conflicting Trump administration tariff decisions combined with several otherworldly issues including the possibility of the United States taking Greenland by military force and promoting Canada as the 51st state.
Not surprisingly, the actions and threats impacted international travel to the United States by foreigners who are offended or feel unwelcome.
According to Forbes, Canadian visitors to the United States via a combination of road trips and airlines decreased 33 percent in June 2025 compared to the same month the prior year. This represented the sixth straight month of decline of Canadians visiting the United States.
The International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce reported a 3.6 percent decline in foreign arrivals by air for the first six months of 2025. With fewer foreign visitors, many of whom come to the United States to enjoy our national parks, we thought it might be interesting to check guest room availability in several national park lodges during the latter part of the 2025 summer season.
Visitor use statistics are from the National Park Service. Room availability was checked by the authors using concessionaire lodge reservation Internet sites during the last few days of July and the first weekend in August.
Yellowstone has nine lodging facilities, ranging from cabins without a private bathroom at Roosevelt Lodge to upscale suites in Lake Yellowstone Hotel. The largest and most centrally located lodging facility is at Canyon. Three of the nine lodges are in the Old Faithful area.
Park recreation visits June 2025 928,250 June 2024 914,612
Overnight lodging stays June 2025 149,712 June 2024 149,512
August room availability Nearly every night in August is available at Canyon Lodge, Mammoth Hotel, Old Faithful Inn, and Lake Yellowstone Hotel. Most nights are available Grant Village and Lake Lodge Cabins. Grant rooms are often booked by tour groups. Availability in less-expensive Old Faithful Lodge Cabins and Roosevelt Lodge is scarce. Old Faithful Snow Lodge has availability for about 50 percent of August nights.
Grand Canyon is home to six lodging facilities on the South Rim and one lodging facility on the North Rim. Unfortunately, the North Rim’s Grand Canyon Lodge burned in July and this section of the park is now closed to the public. Xanterra operates five of the six lodges on the South Rim. The outlier, Yavapai Lodge, is operated by Delaware North.
Park recreation visits June 2025 455,209 June 2024 496,170
Overnight lodging stays June 2025 76,032 June 2024 81,247
August room availability Each of the six South Rim lodges, including El Tovar, has openings nearly every night in August. This is unsurprising based on a decline in park visitation of approximately 110,000 during the first six months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.
Glacier has five lodging facilities. One, Swiftcurrent Motor Inn and Cabins, is closed for the 2025 season due to infrastructure improvements in the Many Glacier area. Several privately-owned lodges closely associated with the park, including Glacier Park Lodge, Apgar Village and Cabins, Motel Lake McDonald and Prince of Wales Hotel, are not included in the statistics.
Park recreation visits June 2025 576,577 June 2024 549,591
Overnight lodging stays June 2025 22,155 June 2024 28,786
August room availability Glacier has minimal availability of guest rooms during August at each of the five park lodges. For example, Lake McDonald Lodges has available rooms on six nights. The park’s most popular lodge, Many Glacier Hotel, has room availability on eight nights, six of which have minimum room prices of more than $700 per night. Village Inn on the west side of the park in Apgar showed availability only on August 1 and 2.
Olympic National Park in northwestern Washington state is home to four lodges. One sits on a bluff along the Pacific Coast, one is at a hot springs, and two are on opposite sides of picturesque Lake Crescent. Kalaloch Lodge along the coast lost ten cabins in 2024 due to bluff erosion.
Park recreation visits June 2025 N/A June 2024 377,590
Overnight lodging stays June 2025 N/A June 2024 8,750
August room availability Each of the four lodges in Olympic National Park has about a half dozen dates available for the month of August. Rates for available rooms run from $300 to $500 per night. Both Log Cabin Resort and Sol Duc Hot Springs show rooms available for consecutive nights.
Shenandoah National Park has three lodging facilities located within 14 miles of one another about midway along 105-mile-long Skyline Drive. One lodge, Lewis Mountain Cabins, is a small facility with nine guest rooms in historic cabins. The other two lodges are relatively large with multiple types of guest rooms.
Park recreation visits June 2025 167,090 June 2024 189,379
Overnight lodging stays June 2025 76,032 June 2024 81,247
August room availability Rooms are available at the two larger facilities, Big Meadow Lodge and Skyland Resort, nearly every night in August. Rooms are available most nights at Lewis Mountain Cabins, a much smaller facility.
Yosemite is home to four lodging facilities in Yosemite Valley, one historic hotel outside the valley and two tent complexes along Tioga Road in the high country. Accommodations range from high-end rooms at the Ahwahnee Hotel to lodging that is about as basic as you can get at Housekeeping Camp along the Merced River in the valley. Wawona Hotel, the primary lodging facility outside Yosemite Valley, was closed indefinitely for repairs in December 2024. Areas of the park were restricted in June 2025 but the published visitation data for June of that year appears flawed.
Park recreation visits June 2025 23,180? June 2024 566,111
Overnight lodging stays June 2025 0? June 2024 97,238
August room availability Room availability is spotty during the first nine days of August, but openings are available throughout the remainder of the month, especially at Curry Village. Yosemite Valley Lodge is the most popular of the four facilities and tends to fill first. On one day the Ahwahnee has only a $1,500/night suite available. That would make for a short stay for most of us.
David and Kay Scott are authors of “Complete Guide to the National Park Lodges”(Globe Pequot). They live in Valdosta, GA. Visit them at blog.valdosta.edu/dlscott
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