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Fay Dorsett
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Hotel and Motel Sales Top $300 Million in Wyoming in 1997
Wyoming's 371 hotels and motels recorded sales of $306 million in 1997,
more than a third of the $809 million in sales for all industries in the
states's Accommodation and Food Services sector, according to a report
released today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.
The report, 1997 Economic Census, Geographic Area Series,
Accommodation and Food Services: Wyoming, is the first in a series of
state reports on this sector from the 1997 Economic Census.
More than a third of the sales by Wyoming's hotels and motels took place
in Teton County, with a total of $105 million. And nearly half of Teton
County's hotel and motel sales ($48 million) occurred in Jackson.
Statewide, the hotel and motel industry employed 7,198 people.
Two other large accommodation and food services industries were
full-service restaurants and limited-service eating places, with sales of
$219.6 million and $188.9 million, respectively.
Full-service restaurants and limited-service eating places employed
8,804 and 6,785 people at 548 and 440 locations, respectively.
Overall, Wyoming's 1,751 accommodation and food services establishments
employed 24,950 workers.
The 1997 Economic Census marks the premiere of a new classification
system called the North American Industry Classification System or NAICS,
which replaces the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system begun
60 years ago.
"The United States developed the system jointly with Canada and Mexico,
making it much easier to compare data with our North American Free Trade
Agreement partners," said Frederick Knickerbocker, the Census Bureau's
associate director for economic programs. "It is also a system that is
much easier to update, so that economic data can keep pace with the
nation's changing economy."
New under NAICS, the Accommodation and Food Services sector comprises
hotels and other lodging places, previously classified in Service
Industries, and eating and drinking places and mobile food services,
previously classified in Retail Trade.
All data compiled for the Accommodation and Food Services sector are
subject to nonsampling errors. Nonsampling errors can be attributed to
many sources: inability to identify all cases in the actual universe;
definition and classification difficulties; differences in the
interpretation of questions; errors in recording or coding the data
obtained; and other errors of collection, response, coverage, processing
and estimation for missing or misreported data.
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The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent collector and disseminator of timely,
relevant and quality data about the people and the economy of the United
States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an
economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and
economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in
1790.
