Co-creating a Business-focused Tourism Development Toolkit for America’s National Parks

U.S. National Park Service

Destination: Washington DC, United States
Engagement: 2020 – 2021


Before the pandemic, some US National Parks were experiencing high consumer demand, while others saw visitation steadily declining. The National Park Service needed a way to empower individual parks – especially smaller, lesser-known parks – to sustainably attract and connect with more visitors.

This required the identification of tools to assess current and future visitation opportunities in alignment with park priorities. Twenty31 was brought onboard to conduct primary and secondary research and develop a tourism toolkit designed to help parks increase sustainable visibility and visitation post-COVID.

Comprehensive stakeholder engagement


We facilitated stakeholder interviews and site visits to collect data, learn about existing tourism development and management practices and growth opportunities, and gain an understanding of current tourism strategies utilized by parks nearby partner DMOs.

Focus groups


We conducted virtual focus groups with key regional park superintendents to develop a better appreciation for the challenges they face in implementing tourism development tasks.

Innovation labs


We hosted a series of Innovation Labs using design-thinking approaches to equip the US National Park Service working group to refine the toolkit outline and early content concepts.

The US National Park Tourism Development Toolkit was soft launched in parks in the US Inter-Mountain Region before rolling it out to pilot parks nationwide.