If it weren’t for the rustic architecture or the granite monoliths in the backdrop, the hub of Curry Village could be in any American amusement park. Burly middle-aged men stroll by in cutoff tanks and Hawaiian shorts, and from within a group of twenty-somethings a woman shouts, “Look, there’s the bar!” at 2 P.M.
The restaurants, gift shops, and lodging throughout Yosemite are run not by the park service, but by a $10.5 billion corporation called Aramark, which also provides food and facilities services to ballparks, prisons, hospitals, and other institutions. Aramark and concessioners Xanterra, Delaware North, and ExplorUS make up what park experts call “the big four” corporations that provide the majority of concessions in national parks, which can also include managing campgrounds, tours, and guiding services. Concessioners pay a franchise fee to the park—11.75 percent of revenues, in the case of Aramark and Yosemite—and in some cases represent a large portion of park operations. Last summer in Yosemite, park employees numbered 758, while Aramark employees numbered 1,271.
A leading theory among park service advocates and experts is that, as with other government agencies, the Trump administration is making the park service inept intentionally, in order to privatize more of its functions. Park service budget is “operational budget,” Jarvis explains, used for wages, utilities, emergency response, and other necessities. “You can’t just pull a billion dollars out of that and expect the park to operate. So the premise is, you’re setting the parks up to fail.”
“The narrative is going to be, ‘See, the park service can’t even maintain the bathrooms. We need to turn to private money to manage these things for profit,” says Michael Childers, a historian who studies the environmental impacts of tourism and is writing a book about Yosemite. The downsizing of regional offices, Chakrin added, could also result in the need for contractors to perform work once held in those offices, like architectural services, engineering, and construction oversight.
Many park service leaders agree that operations like restaurants and hotels are best run by concessioners. But they also say that the goals of for-profit companies are often at odds with the park service’s mission to protect resources. Historically, concessioner contracts have created monopoly conditions that led to ill-maintained facilities, higher prices, and less income for parks, leading to attempts to reform the concessions system from 1998 and onward.
For example, as a relic of a law driven by the concessions lobby in 1965, concessioners are owed for improvements they make to facilities, and must be bought out of those interests, called Leaseholder Surrender Interests (LSI), at the end of a contract—either by the Park Service or a new concessioner. LSIs can become burdensome debts for parks, potentially forcing them to accept lower franchise fees to attract new contracts. This happened famously in the Grand Canyon in 2014, when longtime concessioner Xanterra’s contract expired with nearly $200 million of LSI on the books. In an attempt to attract new bidders and a better franchise rate, the Park Service had to buy down over $100 million of the LSI—borrowing from other parks to do so—and split the concession contract, awarding the smaller portion to Delaware North. Xanterra sued the park to halt the process. Today, it remains the park’s largest concessioner.
Private companies have operated in Yosemite since the area was first set aside as a preserve in 1864, and it has among the largest concessioner presences in the NPS, making it one of the best places to preview the potential pitfalls of further privatization—not just for parks but for visitors, too. Aramark, which operates here under the subsidiary Yosemite Hospitality LLC, earned “marginal” and “unsatisfactory” ratings in park service operating reviews in 2023 and 2024, respectively. The most recent report cited public health concerns, including rodent issues that shut down dining facilities five times last year, including twice at the bar in the historic Ahwahnee Hotel, where rooms start at $578 a night. Issues at the bar, the report stated, included “rodent contamination in the ceiling void directly above a food preparation area.”
I swung through the Ahwahnee Bar on Saturday night, where I ordered a $16 cocktail from a comically dour bartender and had my bill in front of me before I had my drink. While waiting, I chatted with a portly, balding hotel guest who deemed the hotel “a little worn,” noting that the lobby could use some work. He had a good eye: the latest annual report also documented leaks at the Ahwahnee Hotel bar and lobby, as well as exposed rusty nails on decks at the Yosemite Valley Lodge, and mushrooms growing behind the ice machine in the employee break room at the historic Wawona Hotel.
I wasn’t hungry. After finishing my drink, I wandered out onto the hotel lawn, where well-heeled guests splayed out casually beneath a view of Half Dome, and overheard a trio of couples from the Bay Area complaining about the service at the bar. One woman was staying at the hotel. “This place is overpriced,” she told me in a light European accent.
“The view is beautiful,” someone pointed out.
“They’re charging a lot for this view!” laughed a woman in a sleek black dress. When I told her who ran the hotel, she and her partner exchanged looks. “I’m not surprised to hear that Aramark is involved in this,” she said. She worked with them, but wouldn’t tell me how.
Aramark responded to questions sent by RE:PUBLIC and Outside with a written statement. “While we acknowledge that past performance did not always meet expectations, we’ve taken decisive steps to improve,” the company stated. “Renovations and repairs are underway across lodging, employee housing, restaurants, and concession areas throughout the park, all aimed at enhancing the visitor experience and supporting our employees.”
Some former park service leaders believe that further privatization will happen mostly on a function-by-function basis—ranger services, campgrounds, fee collection, search and rescue, and transportation could all eventually be outsourced, they say. But others fear that the government will outsource the management of entire parks.
“There are ideologues in this administration, that I’ve encountered in previous administrations, that basically look at national parks on par with Disneyland,” Jarvis says. “That it’s an amusement park, and it should be run by the private sector.”
Proponents of this theory believe that the less-visited park units Burgum wants to offload to states could be candidates for private management. “I’ve heard talk of, ‘we can turn these parks over to the states,’” says Dan Wenk, a former Yellowstone superintendent who was reportedly forced out of his role in 2018 after clashing with the first Trump administration. “Do you know how many states want to turn [their own] parks over to the National Park Service because they can’t afford to operate them?”
The administration has made no statements to this effect outright, but Jarvis is unassuaged. “Is there an executive order that says convert the national parks to Disneyland?” he asks rhetorically. “No. They’re not that stupid. This is much more incremental and insidious, in my view.”
