The Grand Canyon a place or an institution?

Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is the hub of a complex transportation and communications network. People can travel to the Canyon by air, train, bus or automobile. Thousands of tour groups travel to the Canyon each year, many from distant foreign countries. It is evident that the Grand Canyon is a destination attraction. But how does it compare to some other attractions?


According to InfoPlease, France is the world's top country for tourists, followed by Spain and then the United States. However, the United States earns the most in the world in tourist dollars. In 2003 Arizona was not even in the top ten of the U.S. States visited by foreign travelers and none of the top ten cities for foreign visitors was in Arizona. According to The Travelers Zone, the Grand Canyon was number twenty among the top visited tourist attractions in the U.S., far behind Times Square in New York and Temple Square in Salt Lake City. To give you an idea of popularity, Walt Disney World in Florida was number five and Disneyland in California, number six.
In Arizona, the Grand Canyon is, by far, the most popular and visited attraction in the state. According to the Arizona Department of Tourism report "Arizona 2007 Tourism Facts, Year-end Summary," the Grand Canyon led in numbers of tourists by more than a million people over the second place destination, Phoenix's South Mountain Park. The next three attractions on the list, number two, South Mountain Park, and number three, Saguaro National Monument near Tucson, and number four, Tempe Town Lake, are located adjacent to or actually in, large metropolitan areas.

It is apparent that the Grand Canyon has become an institution with a visitation to the specific facilities at either the North or South Rims as practically the only major activity. An examination of the statistics in the Tourism Report show that only about 10% of the Arizona resident visitors actually hike or camp in any of Arizona's natural attractions. The number one activity is dining out at a restaurant. When non-resident visitors are counted, only 6% either hike or bike and camping isn't even a measured activity. It is clear that the commonly portrayed image of the outdoors as a place for camping and hiking involves only a very, very small minority of the tourism population. This probably isn't surprising given the fact that the average age of a tourist in Arizona, whether resident or non-resident is between 40 and 50 years old.

There are two entirely different and divergent poles of experience at the Grand Canyon; those who view the Canyon from above as an attraction, a commercial institution, and those who experience the Canyon from below and see the real Grand Canyon, a huge and complex ecosystem. Think about it, how many photographs have you seen in Arizona Highways Magazine taken from down inside the Canyon? (Not counting the rafting photos).