Even At Nearly $5B A Year, Wyoming Tourism Not Close To Potential, Industry Says

It was a bummer of a year for many in the liquor industry, but that’s not going to stop Gary Sanders with Taste of the West, a Wyoming liquor broker. He’s doubling down in 2025, making big plans for the best year yet for his 8-year-old business, specializing in the best liquors from the West.

Sanders was just one of hundreds of people attending the Wyoming Governor’s Hospitality & Tourism Convention with big tourism hopes and dreams.

“I know everybody’s cutting back on their business,” he told Cowboy State Daily on the trade show floor of the tourism conference. “But I’m going to double down and hire some employees.”

Gesturing at some of the bottles on display at his trade show booth, from places like Big Lost Meadery and Jackson Hole Still Works, Sanders said each and every product represents a family.

“After this amount of time, I feel like I’m part of every one of these families,” he added. “We aren’t giving up.”

Sanders said he’s heard that a lot of breweries and distilleries have folded up, and he has had several people in the industry telling him it was “just a bad year for liquor.”

“I don’t know why,” he said. “Maybe people are trying to get healthier.”

For him, that doesn’t mean giving up or thinking small. It means thinking bigger and better.

“We have some health drinks coming out that don’t have as much sugar in them,” he said. “We’re doing more gluten-free stuff, and everyone’s trying to go into more organics.”

One of the emerging tourism trends that he’s hoping will help him is an emphasis on unknown, off-the-beaten track adventures.

“I’m one of the only brokers who makes sure he goes out of his way to visit every town and every bar in Wyoming,” he said. “There are a lot of brokers in the state who stay with the bigger cities. They have bigger brands. But for myself, the little guy is just as important as the big guy is, and if I can help them make some money, that makes me feel good.”

Of Llama Treks And Fine Dining Experiences

Sanders isn’t the only one hoping to leverage tourists’ desire for quirky, off-the-beaten-track experiences.

Visit Carbon County CEO Leslie Jefferson feels like that’s a trend that’s tailor made for Carbon County tourism, which offers so many charming venues that are a bit off the beaten track, but quite beautiful. Places like Snake River Valley, Encampment and Saratoga, just to name a few.

“People are looking for the unknown spots,” Jefferson said. “And they want unique experiences.”

That has Visit Carbon County thinking about things like llama treks at Elk Mountain and elevated dining experiences at Saratoga Resort, where the master brewer and chef would be available for parties of an appropriate size.

They’re also thinking about night tours, like dinner at the Wyoming Frontier Prison, complete with actors portraying some of the outlaws who stayed there, and things like vending machines at state parks for kayaks.

Visit Carbon County has recently completed a master plan for its nine biggest communities — Little Snake River Valley, Encampment, Riverside, Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow, Saratoga, Rawlins, Sinclair and Hanna.

Meetings are planned in each community to dig into all the data and figure out what direction each community wants to take in developing new services and tourism options that will appeal to both residents and tourists.

“What helps our residents living here also helps our tourists,” Jefferson said.

Building Up Wildlife

For Taylor Phillips, founder of the WYldlife Fund’s signature program, WYldlife for Tomorrow, 2025 is all about maintaining momentum.

The nonprofit has already seen incredible growth since it was founded in 2020, with 94 business partners on board, spinning out co-branded products like beer, coffee, and even hotel rooms that help support conservation projects that will boost Wyoming wildlife.

“Wyoming’s $4.9 billion travel-tourism industry has incredible potential to elevate the wildlife resource that the industry itself relies on,” Phillips said. “Wildlife is one of the driving forces supporting this industry.”

That message has brought on new partners recently like Snake River Lodge, First Interstate Bank and Riviera Motor Lodge in Saratoga, Phillips said. He’s set a goal of adding 50 more businesses to the businesses that are pulling for wildlife in 2025.

Competition is one of the big challenges he faces in meeting that goal.

“There’s a lot of Wyoming NGOs in the conservation space,” he said. “But we’re very different in that we’re very closely connected to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department through our parent organization the WYldlife Fund. We’re also different in that we are a non-advocacy organization. We serve people and wildlife by putting money on the ground to support projects.”

Already, the organization has put $450,000 into eight different wildlife conservation projects across the state. With 50 more businesses on board, that footprint can grow substantially.

“This conference (Wyoming Governor’s Hospitality & Tourism Convention) has been amazing,” Phillips added. “This is our third year presenting at gov con, and, we’re getting traction. We’ve had quite a few businesses come to us and say like, ‘Hey, we want to join your efforts.’”

Another big challenge Phillips faces is bandwidth. As in, hiring more workforce to help expand the business.

“Right now it’s really just the two of us pounding the pavement, onboarding businesses, and marketing for everything,” Phillips said.

He’s hoping to hire more people in each region of Wyoming to help direct the business effort and add more capacity.

Workforce Capacity Is A “Pinch” Point

Workforce to build tourism capacity in Wyoming is a topic that concerns Wyoming Office of Tourism Director Diane Shober, too, she told Cowboy State Daily. She sees it as a “pinch” point or bottleneck for the industry as a whole.

“Capacity is one of the things that will limit us eventually,” she said. “When you’ve done such a great job, when you’ve gone around to all those little communities, and you can see that unless they can get another hotel or develop a little bit more experience … those will be some limitations for us.”

More experiences, Shober added, doesn’t have to necessarily mean building something new.

“It’s just kind of packaging and aggregating what’s right in front of us,” she said. “Is it a river walk where you could do a birding trail … and what types of birds would you have people look for or listen for. So I think product development and the overnight capacity is important.”

Workforce, meanwhile, is another capacity limiting factor, a “pinch point” for the entire industry.

Programs are underway at the Jay Kemmerer WORTH Institute, an organization that seeks to expand economic growth through tourism, to attract new talent with an ad campaign that unpacks a “day in the life” of various tourism industry careers.

“The audience are our college and high school students, encouraging them to consider a job today that might be available,” Shober said, “But also how they might pursue careers through community colleges or advanced degrees.”

Shober’s big 2025 goals are continued growth of tourism, not just in the places already popular, but also in small, off-the-beaten track opportunities.

Shober also hopes to deepen engagement across the state. At $4.9 billion with a “B,” in tourism spending last year, the industry is a huge economic driver. That’s true not just for the popular icons like Yellowstone National Park and Devils Tower, but for many small towns and communities throughout the state.

“I would love to see all of our events thriving,” she said. “And just seeing more people engage. I would like to walk away with every community in Wyoming saying tourism really matters to the place where we live. It really matters to us.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.