Eleven days after hastily shutting down because of a damaged water pipe, hotels on the Grand Canyon’s South Rim are set to welcome guests again starting on Wednesday, the National Park Service said on Monday.
“Park water utility crews successfully completed complex repairs to the Transcanyon Waterline last week and resumed pumping water without identifying any new breaks,” the park service said in a news release.
The closures affected all seven hotels, as well as an R.V. park, inside the national park. Phantom Ranch, a lodge at the bottom of the canyon that’s accessible only by foot, mule or raft, reopened last week, according to the park service.
“We look forward to once again providing the full guest experience with overnight accommodations,” said Dan Cornforth, the Grand Canyon general manager for Delaware North, the concessionaire that owns Yavapai Lodge and Trailer Village R.V. Park on the South Rim. “We’re grateful to our guests and teams for their patience and flexibility during this time.”
It was not immediately clear how many travelers were affected by the closures. Nearly five million people visited the Grand Canyon last year, and about 90 percent of the park’s visitors go to the South Rim.
Xanterra Travel Collection, which runs five hotels on the South Rim, as well as Phantom Ranch, had previously said it would give guests the option to rebook elsewhere or receive a full refund. Delaware North had said it would accommodate guests at its other hotels in nearby Tusayan, Ariz., which remained open.
The Transcanyon Waterline, a 12.5-mile pipeline that carries water to the South Rim from a source on the North Rim, was built in the 1960s and has experienced more than 85 major breaks since 2010, according to the park service. The current repairs are temporary while the park service continues work on a more than $200 million replacement to the water system that it expects to complete in 2027.
The North Rim, which suffered a major wildfire last summer, is closed for the winter.
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Gabe Castro-Root is a travel reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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