Will we have a record tourism year in 2021?

If you are a betting man or woman, the odds are that this year could find tourism numbers blowing the lid off of any year in the past in the Black Hills. People living in nearby and faraway states that still have their businesses partially locked down will be flocking to the relatively safe confines of the great outdoors in our area.
You can hedge your bets that this could, indeed, be “The Big One” based on huge numbers of reservations for campgrounds and motels that are already at near capacity. This is what everybody has been telling us for tourism stories in our annual Progress Edition in this newspaper and the Hill City Prevailer News.
Expectations are high at the state level as well, according to Tourism Secretary Jim Hagen, who exudes nothing but confidence and optimism that this will be a great year for the visitor industry in South Dakota. He bases this on the fact that last year was a good year because the state never shut down during the pandemic. The word got out and now we can expect even more people traveling here to finally take a family vacation in our great outdoors.
We owe a lot of this economic prosperity to the fact that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem did not shut our state down at the beginning of the pandemic about a year ago. Our businesses stayed open, albeit with a few initial restrictions like “social distancing” and mask wearing. Most of these restrictions have gone away because so many people have contracted the virus and survived and so many others are now being vaccinated.
Noem realized that people needed to be out and working at their jobs instead of being sheltered in their homes for extended periods of time. Eventually people had to get on with their lives, and we did. The results speak for themselves.
The word quickly spread the South Dakota was open for business and people flocked to our state and the Black Hills for their get-away vacations from their locked down states. A number of businesses in Custer and Hill City reported having their best year ever in 2020. This would never have happened had our state gone the way of so many other states in restricting the opening of businesses.
We hope you enjoy reading about all the great things that are happening in our Southern Black Hills area in this week’s annual Progress Editions in the Custer County Chronicle and Hill City Prevailer News. New businesses have opened and many others have expanded their services.
We look forward to seeing the streets filled with cars, trucks and motorcycles in Custer and Hill City, two cities where parking is always at a premium during the upcoming busy tourism season. Tourism is the lifeblood of the Black Hills and we look forward to another great year of sharing this unique place with our many visitors.
And, yes, we would not at all be surprised if this year broke all tourism records in the Southern Black Hills!

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