Communications lessons from my trip to Yellowstone National Park

GGPR was closed the week of July 4th so my family could get back to nature and explore Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Our time in Grand Teton was great, but our trip to Yellowstone didn’t quite turn out how we planned after a shooting in the park and its aftermath wreaked havoc on our plans.?

It’s taken me a while to fully process our experience and its broader implications. In the coming weeks, I will share my thoughts about our experience and the crisis communications, employee communications, and customer communications best practices that could (potentially) have led to a better guest experience in the aftermath of this shooting.?

What follows is a summary of the shooting and aftermath as it was described in press reports and a description of why my family experienced as guests in Yellowstone National Park following the shooting. These posts are based on my experience and perspective. Others may have had different experiences or may have different perspectives.

What happened??

On July 4, 2024, the day before we arrived at Yellowstone National Park, an employee of the park’s hotel and restaurant vendor Xanterra, took another employee hostage and threatened to carry out a mass shooting. He was tracked down by park rangers who found him shooting a semiautomatic weapon and engaged him in a firefight in the Canyon Village area of the park, the same area where we planned to stay July 5-9. The gunman was killed, a park ranger was injured, and thankfully no one else was hurt. The National Park Service issued this news release on July 4, and subsequently updated it on July 9 with additional information.??

We arrived at our hotel in the Canyon Village area at about 4 p.m. on July 5, approximately 32 hours after the shooting occurred. We received no communication from Xanterra about the incident or its potential impact on our travel plans prior to our arrival at the hotel.

When we arrived at our hotel, there was chaos. We were told we wouldn’t be able to check in right away and were offered a free dinner buffet that had been set up in a conference room. Different employees offered different reasons for the delay – the FBI took over some rooms, they couldn’t access the laundry facilities, there weren’t enough staff—there was probably some truth to each of these explanations, but given that Xanterra operates several other properties in the park, laundry access and staffing seemed like addressable problems and the FBI taking over a few rooms for their agents shouldn’t have led to the level of chaos we experienced with hundreds of guests unable to check in and no clarity on when we could check in or where we would stay if there weren’t enough rooms.??

Without clear communication from any hotel staff, the hotel began quietly checking in guests a few hours later. We waited in a long line but were relieved to get a room. We unpacked, showered, and prepared to explore Yellowstone early the next morning.?

The morning of July 6, we left our room about 8 a.m. After a full day of exploring, we returned to Canyon Village around 7 p.m. At that point, we were informed by a park ranger that the hotel and the adjoining campground were closed. Our reservation for the next three nights would not be honored, and we needed to pack up, check out, and leave the area.?

We received no communication from Xanterra or hotel staff that they would be closing the hotel or campground earlier that day. The staff member who checked us out offered the explanation that they did not have staffing to operate the hotel because the staff were traumatized from the incident. Again, we questioned why they couldn’t bring in staff from other sites and thought it odd that Xanterra closed a campground – given that a campground doesn’t take much staff to run. We got no clear answers.

We were handed a list of phone numbers for local hotels, several of which were disconnected. All properties within a two-hour radius (West Yellowstone, Gardiner, and Cooke City) were fully booked, which was not surprising given that this is a rural area and the 4th of July weekend is one of the busiest travel weeks of the year. We ended up in a motel in Livingston, Montana – more than two hours away – in a room with just one bed and no couch for our family of three. It was this room or traveling further - to Cody, Wyoming or Bozeman, Montana.?We were able to relocate to a motel in West Yellowstone the following night.

Everyone visiting Yellowstone July 4th was lucky that the brave actions of the National Park Service rangers prevented a more deadly attack and kept the crime scene limited to a small area of the park. Despite this, the crisis had a snowball effect on Xanterra staff and customers. I believe that how the company handled communications with these audiences played a big role in the snowball effect. In the coming weeks, I will share some thoughts on what organizations like Xanterra can do to better prepare for and handle a crisis like this one, or any crisis that has the potential to become a repetitional nightmare.