Some areas of the state have a much larger percentage of its businesses linked to tourism, the study found. Most of the 11 areas were below 10 percent, but the figure was 36 percent in Garfield, Kane and Wayne counties and a mere 2.8 percent along the Wasatch Front — figures that did not surprise Burr.

"Should we be upset about these numbers? Not really, because those (Wasatch Front numbers) are the more-populated areas of the state, and when you think about tourism being part of the economic mix, where a healthy economy is diversified, those numbers appear right," he said.

Whitney Johnston, a Southern Utah University student who has worked with a pair of SUU professors on tourism research for the past two years, presented SUU survey results of visitors to southern Utah that differed with those of a D.K. Shifflet & Associates visitor profile study that she said "was kind of representing more of the Salt Lake City, Park City, snowbirds kind of visitors coming in the winter season to snowboard and to ski."

The SUU study found higher percentages of southern Utah visitors staying more than six nights, visiting national parks more than once, making more than two overnight trips during the past year, traveling without children and having previously been to a Utah destination than was reflected in the DKS study.

Most southern Utah visitors in the SUU surveys had incomes over $70,000, were married, had a college degree and were in a managerial or professional position.

But Whitney said more study is needed so that companies are better able to almost pigeonhole what guests are going to do so that the companies know how to better spend their advertising dollars.

"Basically, we want to be able to say if a white male from Southern California that is 55 years old and married is coming to southern Utah, we'd be able to tell you what he'll see, how much he'll spend, where he'll stay and his length of stay here," she said.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com