Crater Lake's new hospitality company reflects on a demanding first season

Crater Lake is the only national park in Oregon. Its breathtaking sights draw hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

While National Park Service rangers take care of the park and its natural resources, a private company — called a concessionaire — runs the restaurants, gift shops, hotels, campgrounds and boat tours.

This year, that company is ExplorUS. They also manage other national and state properties across the country, but it’s their first year managing Crater Lake. Another company, Aramark, ran the park until early this year.

“This was an unusual transition between Aramark and ourselves, because it was a very short one,” said William Boas, vice president of operations at ExplorUS.

The National Park Service terminated Aramark’s contract in February over consistent failures to meet park service standards.

According to annual reports, Aramark faced a number of food safety violations, poor employee housing conditions and a major diesel fuel spill.

After taking over the contract in late March, Boas said ExplorUS had just a few weeks to prepare before park facilities opened in mid-May.

“You have to remember too that at that time, we had 11 employees on site,” he said. “And we grew that staff from 11 employees to 200 employees in the course of about three and a half weeks.”

Related: National Park Service plans to terminate Crater Lake hospitality contract over unsafe conditions

Supplies, schedules and sick leave

One of those new employees was Jordyn Evans, a camp host at the Mazama Campground. This was the first year that Crater Lake had camp hosts, who clean up facilities and campsites, deal with camper complaints and act as a welcoming face for visitors. Evans said he was hired quickly after applying.

“[The interviewer] kind of warned me during the interview that it was going to be a little bit chaotic, because it’s their first year having this park on contract,” he said. “But I wasn’t quite expecting it to be as chaotic as it is.”

Evans said that it was unclear to camp hosts when their first day working for ExplorUS was.

“I couldn’t get the HR to answer my question straight. I would compare it to text messaging some teenage boy. You send them three questions, and they answer one,” he said.

Another issue Evans said staff faced was getting supplies.

“We only recently started getting supplies for us to stock our bathrooms with consistently this month” he said. “Otherwise, we’ve had to beg for supplies. We’ve had to try and juggle supplies around to make sure everybody has toilet paper.”

Evans said staff also had to buy their own cleaning supplies, alongside issues with out-of-order showers and washing machines.

Communication with HR was difficult for staff elsewhere as well, according to Emanuel Killian, who works overnight at the Crater Lake Lodge. He said there are ongoing issues with staff benefits like sick leave and scheduling.

“Everything seemed OK, but once everything started and opened, everything else, employee wise, kind of got last priority,” Killian said.

He said other staff haven’t been getting their sick leave or schedule as required by state law. Hospitality, retail and food service workers in Oregon are required to receive their schedules at least two weeks in advance, or they’re owed a penalty payment from their employer.

“If [employees] don’t speak up, or if they don’t know, on a case by case basis, they’re not getting their due rights, and they’re unaware of it,” Killian said.

He said the fact that a lot of young employees come to work at Crater Lake from other countries could contribute to their lack of knowledge of local labor laws. He said he’s brought this issue up with HR multiple times, but never saw the issues fixed across the board.

William Boas from ExplorUS said he doesn’t know of any issues with sick leave or people having to buy their own supplies. He said he’s visited the property around nine times since March and has never seen a shortage of supplies, but said it could have been a miscommunication between staff and the warehouse. However, Boas said there have been some hiccups with staff scheduling that he said he’s worked to address.

“The problem was, we had a little bit of a transition period where schedules were being created in an Excel form, and that was what was being posted,” he said. “And then they were trying to get back and put it within our payroll system. And that wasn’t happening.”

Making lemonade out of a lemon

The National Park Service declined to be interviewed. But in a statement, the park’s deputy superintendent, Sean Denniston, said, “We appreciate their commitment to significant investments in facilities, staff training, visitor services, and other areas over the next few years to improve conditions for their employees and guests. ExplorUS has been responsive to our and guests’ feedback and has demonstrated a commitment to providing quality visitor services.”

Camp Host Jordyn Evans said he won’t be returning to Crater Lake after this summer’s experience. But others are more optimistic about ExplorUS’ ability to turn things around, like Belinda Crompton, another camp host.

“There’s still some problems here, and they’re working on them,” she said. “Nothing’s going to get fixed in a heartbeat. But it’s slow.”

She said the visitor reviews online have been so much better this year than they were in the past. Realistically, Crompton said ExplorUS has done a pretty good job.

“They were handed an absolute lemon,” she said. “They’re figuring out how to make lemonade. They’re not there. They’ll get there.”

Crompton said she hasn’t decided yet if she wants to return to work at Crater Lake next year.

Renovations to come

William Boas from ExplorUS said as the season winds down, their focus turns to building renovations that were originally promised by Aramark, but never completed. Boas said they have a very small window between when staff are gone and snow starts to get in the way of construction.

“We operate Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine, that has a similar kind of window of operations, and so it’s not unique to this park,” Boas said. “We leverage the experience that we have working in those environments to help us develop plans for here.”

One of the major renovations planned is for one of the two employee dormitories, called the Rim Dorm. The conditions were described as ‘disgusting’ last year by a former employee.

Boas said before the staff moved in this spring, ExplorUS did what they could to make the employee housing more comfortable.

“We made an extra effort to go in there and completely paint the interior of the building, to do a deep cleaning on all the carpets and all the facilities, the restroom facilities and kitchen area in there, so that people really understood that we wanted them to have good lodging conditions as employees,” he said.

Killian, who lived in the Rim Dorm, said there are still some rodent issues, as well as problems with the laundry facilities. But he did notice the new equipment and the deep cleaning that ExploreUS did.

Boas said most people may only visit a national park once in their lives, so making sure they have a positive experience is important. A review of this year’s operations by the National Park Service is expected in April.

“We don’t expect to be perfect, but we do want to be as good as we can be every day, and we preach that to our folks,” Boas said. “We try and make sure it’s a great environment.”