News from Travel Michigan's Director, George Zimmermann The 2007 edition of our Michigan Travel Ideas magazine is hot off the presses and we are very proud of it. Consumers will be able to receive a copy through one of our 13 Welcome Centers around the state, by ordering it off michigan.org, or calling our toll-free number, 888-784-7328. Special thanks go to all our tourism industry advertisers, who make 850,000 copies of this beautiful publication possible. And a tip of the hat to Travel Michigan’s Robin Peebles and all our friends at Meredith Publishing for their outstanding work on this year’s edition. If you haven’t registered yet for this year’s annual tourism conference, now is the time to act. The Michigan Tourism Industry Strategic Plan will be unveiled at this conference, making this one of the most important such events in years. Be there to participate in this industry-driven planning process, as well as to attend great sessions on a wide variety of tourism-related topics. In addition, we will be presenting our plans for the second year of the “Pure Michigan” branding campaign. Click here to register for the conference, which is being held March 26 and 27 at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa in the Traverse City area. As mentioned in our January newsletter, there will be a special meeting of the Michigan Travel Commission on Friday, February 9th at 11:00 a.m. to finalize the Commission’s role vis-à-vis the Industry Strategic Plan. The location of the meeting has moved to the Bavarian Inn Restaurant, 713 S. Main Street, Frankenmuth. Industry attendance and participation is encouraged. For more information, contact George Zimmermann at (517) 335-1879. MACVB Names Officers for the Upcoming Year The newly elected officers are: Marci Cisneros, Grand Haven Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, president; Millicent Huminsky, Southwestern Michigan Tourist Council, vice president; Linda Hoath, Sault Ste. Marie Convention & Visitors Bureau, Secretary; Mary Carroll, Mount Pleasant Convention & Visitors Bureau, treasurer; Dwight Butt, Battle Creek/Calhoun County Convention & Visitors Bureau, member-at-large. Jerry Preston, Flint Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, will serve as past president. MACVB is comprised of 45 member bureaus located throughout the State of Michigan. The Michigan Association of Convention & Visitor Bureaus is an organization of Convention & Visitor Bureau CEO’s whose mission is to serve as the advocate for its members through education and communication, while representing their legislative interests. For more information, contact Larisa Draves at (231) 823-0015. Great Lakes Cruising 2007 Six cruise ships will be calling on a number of Michigan ports in 2007. Detroit, Mackinaw City, Mackinac Island, Sault Ste. Marie, Beaver Island, Manistee, Holland and Traverse City are all scheduled as ports of call this year. Travel Michigan is part of the Great Lakes Cruising Coalition (GLCC), a partnership of Great Lakes ports, convention and visitor bureaus and local economic development agencies, as well as state and provincial tourism offices. Other Michigan members of GLCC include the ports of Detroit and Port Huron and the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau. The goal of the GLCC is to promote the Great Lakes for increased passenger cruising. For more information, contact Stephen Burnett, Executive Director of the Great Lakes Cruising Coalition, at (613) 544-7857. Reach 1 million Households -- Place an Ad in thePure Michigan 2007 Summer Travel Guide Reach nearly 1 million households in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio when you place your ad in the Pure Michigan 2007 Summer Travel Guide(pdf 379kb). The 24-page, 2007 summer travel guide, produced by Booth Newspapers, will highlight areas around the state and give readers suggested itineraries. Booth will distribute 606,093 Summer Travel Guides with PARADE, America's best-read magazine, in Booth’s normal eight Michigan markets plus Lansing & Metro Detroit and another 348,000 will be distributed in newspapers in Fort Wayne, South Bend and Toledo. In addition, the guide will also be available online on Mlive.com. This is a great opportunity to hit key markets in Michigan and the feeder markets of Fort Wayne, South Bend and Toledo. For more information, contact Dan Sippel at (616) 222-5825. michigan.org Web Site Updates — A Travel Perspective December 2006 web visits that were served Travel content at michigan.org have increased by 55 percent over the same period last year. December 2006 web visits totaled nearly 700,000 compared to over 450,000 for 2005. Year-to-date totals for 2006 have logged over 10.3 million web visits. This compares to over 7.0 million web visits through December 2005, an increase of over 47 percent.
Total December click-throughs from michigan.org to Michigan travel industry web sites were over 222,000, an increase of nearly 27 percent over 2005. Total click-throughs for 2006 number nearly 5.0 million; this is an increase of over 36 percent over 2005. Click-throughs are defined as the number of times michigan.org web visitors clicked on a link and were transferred to a private sector web site.
For more information, please contact Gary Platte at (517) 335-1877. michigan.org—Your Promotion Portal The Travel Michigan web site is brimming with information about Michigan's many tourist events and package promotions. However, to be sure that your special package offer and/or travel event is listed in our database, we need you to send us the vital information. Travel Michigan is always happy to promote your tourism related deals and discounts/packages and events. To submit your events, complete our Event Survey and click “Submit.” To submit deals and discounts/packages, complete the Deals and Discounts Survey. If a new tourism business would like to be listed in our database, go to "add your business" and fill out the form. For more information regarding your property or events, contact Trudy Atwood at (800) 676-1743. UK Hotelier Scam Hits Southeastern Michigan Thanks to our story in last month’s Travel Industry Newsletter, a local hotelier in Ann Arbor had a heads-up and was prepared to properly waylay what is becoming a very popular scam. The Attorney General’s office tells us that this scam knows no bounds. No person, business, or other entity (even charities) is immune. For general advice on this subject, visit the Attorney General provides consumer alerts. For more information, contact Dave Lorenz at (517) 335-0007. Hotel Occupancy in Michigan, December 2006 Report The Smith Travel Research report for December 2006 shows that for the second year in a row Michigan lodging occupancy rate finished the year with the lowest occupancy rate of any U.S. state. For the month of December 2006, Michigan’s occupancy was 40.0%, 2.1% lower than the same month last year. U.S. occupancy was significantly higher at 50.2%, though it too declined from December of last year by 1.2%. For the month of December alone, Michigan had the 3rd lowest occupancy of any state. With this monthly decline in occupancy, Michigan ranked 50th out of 50 states in year-to-date occupancy. Occupancy in Michigan through December was 53.9%, 0.9% above last year. The national average for hotel occupancy stood at 63.4%, 0.5% higher than last year. Detroit area occupancy for the month of December stood at 45.5%, 0.8% lower than the same month last year. Year-to-date occupancy in Detroit stood at 56.9%, a 0.2% decline from the end of last year. Detroit finished 2006 25th out of the 25 largest metro areas in the U.S.
Source: Smith Travel Research is based in Hendersonville, TN. They have collected monthly and daily operating data and reported on the state of the lodging industry for 20 years. Currently over 23,000 hotels in the U.S. participate in its monthly survey. For more information, contact Dave Morris at (517) 373-0673. PR Star of the Month Public Relations Manager Erin Ernst, Boyne USA Resorts, and Chad Cavender from Boyne Country Sports, know what it takes to pull off a television segment promoting winter sports in Michigan. When the Travel Michigan PR Team contacted Boyne Country Sports in regard to a winter sports gear segment for WJBK, Fox 2 Detroit, just four days prior to the segment, Erin jumped in and made sure that the spokesperson was prepped and ready to go. As a result, on Sunday, January 7, a three-minute segment highlighting winter gear served as a great reminder to viewers to get ready to hit the slopes with the right equipment. Way to go Erin and Chad! For more information, contact Kirsten Borgstrom at (517) 335-1871. Save the Date for the Driving Tourism 2007 Conference Mark your calendar for the second annual Driving Tourism Conference, March 26-27, 2007, at the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa in Traverse City. The 2007 event is sponsored by The Michigan Hotel, Motel & Resort Association (MHMRA), in conjunction with Travel Michigan and Michigan State University. For more information, contact Steve Yencich, MHMRA, at (517) 267-8989. In the News
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