There's an issue of hotel rates in the park I think people would be interested in
see our full piece on the Trump era deregulation of NPS hotel rates at
https://www.defendourparks.org/thepetitionarticle
A snippet of the article we wrote
In 2017 Trump wanted to privatize National Parks. Then Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke who would later earn infamy by rescinding methane and lead pollution regulations on public lands; declared he wasn’t in the business of running camp sites; Zinke and Trump began a concerted effort to raise National Parks entrance fees and sell off vital assets to developers and unscrupulous concessionaires. The effort failed. The public outcry was loud and clear, hands off our parks. Neither Trump or Zinke accept this gracefully and struck back with a plan to deregulate hotel rates throughout the National Parks, something they could do away from the public eye and out of congressional purview.
By 2021 deregulation was a disaster for the visitor, a room that in 2016 cost $265 was now around $700 a night, an old house room that went for less than $100 in 2015 now cost $455, pricing most retirees and everyday visitors out of an overnight stay. For all but the wealthy, vacations to our historic hotels was now, a distant memory. That’s when one of the original Twitter AltParks accounts @AltYelloNatPark, took up the cause and began a petition asking the new Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to rescind the Trump era changes in regulations and return lodging rates to 2016 levels. You can view and sign the petition at http://chng.it/YxWWNJtV
Taxes and entrance fees pay for our National Parks, but after deregulation by the Trump administration and shameless price gouging by greedy concessionaires; all but the most wealthy visitors are priced out of staying a night in our National Parks. While between 2016 and 2020 fees paid by NPS concessionaires increased by no more than $20 million while over the same time period NPS average annual budget was cut $460 million.