Real People and Real Trip Dates

Today, non-commercial or private boaters desiring to complete a Grand Canyon river trip are rightfully concerned with the fundamentally flawed permit application, distribution, and management process currently in use at Grand Canyon National Park.

Some applicants wait years to receive a permit while others take advantage of a system that for those "in the know" can provide multiple trips regularly, and sometimes even within the same year. National Park Service non-commercial river trip participant records indicate that in the last five years, one tenth of all private boaters completing trips went on two or more trips. This ten percent of repeaters used fully one quarter of the total non-commercial use available during this period. For more information, see Repetitive Use.]

Moreover, the system’s high cancellation rate of awarded permits, which runs to thirty or sometimes as much as forty percent each year also speaks clearly of the system’s failure.

This paper suggests an alternative system designed to provide reasonable access to the river for private trip participants on par with what professionally outfitted patrons currently enjoy. This is a system based on a straightforward reservations model, which capitalizes on travel industry practices commonly used throughout the world. When a reservation is made under this system, it must be made for real people who commit to undertaking a non-commercial river trip launching on a specific date for an established group size.

Please understand that this real people/real trip dates permit distribution model (or any such river access distribution model under review) comprises only one element of the necessarily comprehensive solution needed to address private river runner access issues at Grand Canyon National Park. Many other important issues exist but fall outside the scope of this paper.

One such important question involves the overall level of the recreational use allocation for the Colorado River corridor within Grand Canyon National Park and the allocation of this use between competing user groups such as the self-outfitted and the professionally outfitted. [Please see River Access and the Recreational Use Allocation for more information.] This paper does not address issues related to the size of or division of the available recreational use between various groups. This paper does offer a new suggestion for how those private permits that will be available could be distributed in a fair and equitable manner that would produce reasonable access to the Colorado River for the self-guided, despite the ever growing demand for this experience.

Because the supply of permits must be limited for the good of the resource and the experience, it is incumbent on the National Park Service to manage such demand in a fair and effective way. It must be recognized, however, that not everyone who seeks a river trip permit under a reservations model, or under any other possible use distribution concept employed, will be able to obtain a permit on every attempt. This is because the very purpose of a permit distribution system in a situation where demand exceeds supply is to effectively ration such permits.

This reservations model is designed, however, through the imposition of reasonable and equitable incentives and disincentives, to ensure that those who are willing to commit to a launch date certain, with an identified group of individuals willing to back up their desire with a refundable monetary deposit, would enjoy reasonable access to the river despite the heavy demand for non-commercial river trips that clearly exists.

In presenting these ideas, the Grand Canyon’s professional river outfitters hope to offer the benefits of lessons learned, sometimes the hard way, over the years as we have sought to improve customer service and satisfaction, discourage frivolous trip requests and reservations, minimize cancellation rates, and implement procedures that allow those truly serous about completing a Grand Canyon river trip in the near future do so with relative ease given a reasonable level of advance planning.


HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In 1981, the National Park Service established a total recreational use allocation for the Colorado River within Grand Canyon National Park at 169,950 user-days. A user-day is one person on the river for one day.

Today, as for the past twenty years, professionally outfitted use – that use made available to the general public by the licensed outfitters in the form of river trip packages – accounts for 115,500 user-days, or 68 percent of this total. Non-commercial or "private" recreational use of the river – that which is used by individuals to conduct their own trips relying on their own equipment and skill – accounts for 54,450 user-days, or 32 percent.

Twenty years ago, the 1981 Colorado River Management Plan also established the basics of the private permit management system which remains in use today. It’s elements include the trip leader concept (he or she who applies for the permit on the group’s behalf and who then decides who will make up the group’s participants), the waiting list for private permit distribution on a first come, first served basis, and many other such related administrative practices and details.

In 1989, the National Park Service reconfirmed both the total level of recreational use and the commercial/non-commercial ratio of 68 and 32 percent. A non-commercial (or private) river trip was defined by the NPS in the following manner:

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A non-commercial river trip must be participatory in nature. Trip preparation (including logistics, food purchase, equipment assembly, transportation, and vehicle shuttle) and conduct of the trip (including food preparation and sanitation) must be shared by members of the group. Collecting a set fee (monetary compensation) payable to an individual, group, or organization for conducting, leading, or guiding a non-commercial river trip is not allowed. Trip permittees should delegate responsibility (financial and otherwise) for various aspects of trip preparation and conduct.

CRMP Non-commercial Operation Requirements

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This is the NPS definition of a private river trip that remains in force today. Yet the concept or definition of a private river trip in the Grand Canyon has clearly evolved in striking and important ways since these words were written in 1989, and the basics of the system were first established in 1981.

One important development that has changed the fundamental nature of many private trips is the increasing use of outfitting companies that provide equipment rental, meal planning and food purchase and pack services and logistical support such as vehicle shuttles. Such services vastly simplify the logistical management necessary to complete a Grand Canyon river trip and have been one important factor leading to increased private demand.


REAL PEOPLE AND REAL TRIP DATES

The Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association proposes a new private permit distribution and management system based on the provision of guaranteed reservations for specific launch dates for identified participants. Over time, confidence in the system would be created as a natural equilibrium between permit demand and system disincentives would define the lead time necessary to obtain a reservation and to organize and launch a trip. As the average wait stabilized, predictability would be established. The system’s rules would be established to prevent the frivolous booking of trips well out into the future in an attempt to lock up trip space unreasonably.

Under Real People/Real Trip Dates, no longer would citizens be forced to stand in line simply in an attempt to create merely the option for a future trip years and years in advance. Right now, a willingness to stand in line is used as the principle means by the National Park Service to ration private river trip permits. This practice is demonstrably unfair, inefficient, and impractical. It is also intensely controversial.

We believe that the reservation management system we propose coupled with other improvements, including a reasonable increase in the non-commercial user-day allocation, could produce an average wait for a private trip permit of perhaps twelve to twenty months. Importantly, park managers would have the ability over time to control the system’s administrative variables in order to produce equitable treatment for non-commercial boaters when compared to professionally outfitted patrons.


HOW THE SYSTEM WOULD WORK

The Real People/Real Trip Dates reservation model would require the payment of a significant up-front, but fully refundable, trip security bond to lock in a known and guaranteed launch date for a specific list of applicants and a group size of the applicant’s choice, up to the maximum allowed. After identifying the group’s participants and obtaining commitments from each, a permit applicant acting on behalf of the group, would contact the Grand Canyon National Park river trip reservationist to make a reservation for a specific launch date for a trip of a specified duration and group size. The launch date may be for the next available date or a date further out into the future, as the group desires. After the reservation is made, the launch date and the group size cannot be altered.

To confirm the reservation, each participant would then supply the park with a refundable trip security bond. If received within a reasonable period of time, perhaps thirty days, this deposit would hold and lock in the reservation. It would be refunded in full (minus any applicable NPS fees) upon the successful launch and conclusion of the trip. If any one of the group’s individual participants failed to provide the required security bond, the reservation would be cancelled and the date released to other interested parties.

Substitution of a reasonable percentage of each group’s participants would be allowed up until the trip launched. However, the large balance of the group’s original participants would be required to accompany the trip. Also a nominal transaction cost would be imposed on requests to swap trip participants. These requirements are designed to prevent speculation in trip permits or the selling of trip slots. They would also serve to enforce a high level of commitment from each of the group’s participants.

Any individual could hold only a single reservation at a time on the launch calendar but could immediately make another reservation after the completion of his or her initial trip. Trips canceling or not launching with the required number of original participants as were initially identified at the time of booking would forfeit each of the individual passengers’ trip security bonds.

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