News from Travel Michigan's Director, George Zimmermann

March was a very important month for the Michigan travel and tourism industry. At the "Driving Tourism 2007" conference in Traverse City, the Michigan Travel Commission unveiled the industry-driven Michigan Tourism Strategic Plan. This plan is the roadmap for the industry's future growth and prosperity and it will require continued involvement by all segments of the tourism industry to be effectively implemented. Click on the "Michigan Tourism Strategic Plan" to the left of this column to view the plan summary and the plan source document.

Speaking of the tourism conference -- a collaboration of the Michigan Hotel, Motel & Resort Association, Michigan State University and MEDC/Travel Michigan -- it drew its largest crowd in years for a series of educational and motivational sessions and networking opportunities. While attendee satisfaction surveys are still being tabulated, we at Travel Michigan heard lots of positive feedback about the event. Whether you attended or not, we welcome your input on what types of sessions to include as we start to plan the 2008 conference.

During his conference session on Michigan tourism performance and projections, MSU's Dr. Don Holecek projected modest growth for 2007. Specifically, he predicts that travel volume will be up one to two percent this year, travel spending will increase three to four percent and travel prices will rise four to five percent. For Dr. Don Holecek's presentation, click here.

We are always evaluating new features to enhance michigan.org, looking for ways to make it the most effective web site possible for the marketing of Michigan as a travel destination. One new opportunity we are offering to you, our private sector, is the ability to link from michigan.org to any promotional videos you are presenting on your web site. If you have videos and would like such a link on your page on michigan.org, please email Trudy Atwood and provide a link to the page on your web site where you have your videos presented. To ensure the authenticity of such videos, we will only link to video pages on your site. We believe giving michigan.org visitors the opportunity to view your promotional videos will increase the effectiveness of the site and the marketing of Michigan for tourism.

I reported last month on our new tracking of all state tourism web site volumes/market shares. I am pleased to announce that in February, michigan.org was the second busiest state tourism web site in the country, behind only Florida. Florida tourism's web site had 8.6% of all of the web traffic to the 50 state tourism sites, we had 6.23%, followed by Virginia (4.94%), Hawaii (4.9%) and Arkansas (4.71%) in the top five. We will be adding this tracking to our regular monthly web results reports.

For more information, contact George Zimmermann at (517) 335-1879.

---

Thank You!

A wise person once told me that you can never say thank you enough. That's how I feel after the introduction of the Michigan Tourism Strategic Plan on Monday, March 26th, at the Driving Tourism 2007 Conference.

The Michigan Travel Commission was honored to present this plan to the industry that created it. Like the collaborative process that characterized its creation, our presentation included many voices sharing this blueprint for improving the future of tourism in Michigan. Travel Michigan's advertising agency, McCann Erickson, set the tone with a stunning opening and closing video; the Michigan Economic Development Corporation's graphics unit created a supporting four-color plan summary; Jerry Preston, CEO of the Flint CVB, and Rick Hert, Executive Director of West Michigan Tourist Association, representing the Plan Coordination Team, described the planning process and officially conveyed ownership of this plan to the Commission. Five commissioners, including yours truly, shared elements of the plan, and George Zimmermann, Vice President of Travel Michigan, was our producer and moderator extraordinaire.

The goal of our presentation was to convey the strategic importance of this plan to our industry and the Commission's commitment to advance its recommendations.

Because a plan's value is only as good as the action it stimulates, the Commission will now focus on our action plan and timeline. Within the next 30 days, the Commission will convene to review plan recommendations and prioritize them based on need and available resources. To help us with this process, we will invite the eight Plan Issue Work Team co-chairs to identify and recommend their highest priority from their respective section. The Commission will report on recommendations and an initial implementation strategy at our next meeting in June.

We recognize that with some recommendations we can move forward relatively quickly, while others are more challenging and require substantial resources that are currently not available. Our focus will not be on what we can't do, but what we can do…and we will do it in partnership with you...perhaps a bit like eating an elephant-one bite at a time! The model for our process is engraved in stone at the entry to Greenfield Village:

"Everything of significance that we do today, we do in partnership with others."

To succeed in today's challenging economy we can't overstate the importance of working together to share and leverage scarce resources. We believe so strongly in partnership and collaboration as guiding principles that we will be looking for ways to highlight industry "best practices" in this regard.

The Pure Michigan video that was produced for the Plan Introduction captured it well:
We've got a plan. Now we need to embrace it.

Thank you.

Detroit Super Bowl Leaders Honored

The chairman and executive director of the Detroit Super Bowl XL were recognized with the "Outstanding Achievement in Tourism" award at the "Driving Tourism 2007" conference. Roger Penske, chairman of the Detroit Super Bowl Host Committee, and Susan Sherer, executive director of the Host Committee, were honored for their leadership of this very successful event. Super Bowl XL brought hundreds of millions of dollars of spending by sponsors and visitors to southeast Michigan, and just as importantly, generated unprecedented positive media coverage for Detroit and Michigan worldwide. A recent example of the continuing impact of that media coverage was in the Orlando Sentinel, where a sports columnist, in comparing this year's Super Bowl in Miami to Super Bowl XL in Detroit, wrote: "I'd rather be in Detroit.....from the perspective of a whiny media member, let me just say that Detroit tried harder than Miami. Detroit had a better media center, better logistics, better hospitality, better coffee, better wireless internet and better hotels."

---

michigan.org Web Site Updates — A Travel Perspective  

February 2007 web visits that were served Travel content at Michigan.org have increased by 42 percent over the same period last year. February 2007 web sessions totaled over 703,000 compared to over 494,000 for 2006. Year-to-date totals for 2007 have logged over 1.5 million web sessions. This compares to over 1.0 million web sessions through February 2006, an increase of 45 percent.

Total February 2007 click-throughs from michigan.org to Michigan travel industry web sites were 277,135, an increase of nearly 37 percent over 2006. Total click-throughs for 2007 number over 570,000; this is an increase of nearly 30 percent over 2006. 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.

According to the rankings of Hitwise, during February 2007, michigan.org placed second among the 50 state tourism web sites for market share of visits. With a market share of 6.23 percent, Michigan ranked behind only Florida.

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 Discount 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 our database listing of deals and discounts/packages, contact Marilyn Schneider at (517) 241-2605, or Diane Wells at (517) 335-6909.

For more information regarding your property or events, contact Trudy Atwood at (800) 676-1743.

New Welcome Center Promotional Opportunity

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is finalizing a contract with Farmington Hills-based Digital 10 Network, Inc. to supply and operate a multimedia broadcast system to all 13 Welcome Centers across the state of Michigan. As you are aware, the state's Welcome Centers are operated by Travel Michigan under an agreement with MDOT and these centers host over nine million travelers annually.

Under contract conditions, Digital 10 supplies all equipment, software, installation and maintenance for the system in exchange for the rights to sell advertising time on the Welcome Center screens to the state's tourism industry.

MDOT and Travel Michigan believe that this is a win-win situation for all the parties involved. The state receives a system, at no cost, that can promote the state's tourism product as well as broadcast any emergency weather/road condition messages. Travelers get up-to-the-minute advisories plus are exposed to the many exciting Pure Michigan destinations and attractions, and the tourism industry gets another cost effective venue to promote itself.

Jim Lavender and Gene Brady are our principle contacts at Digital 10 Network. For details contact Jim Lavender at (248) 755-4552, or Gene Brady at (248) 921-1295.

This is a great advertising opportunity for any business/organization that is part of the Michigan tourism industry.

For more information, contact Ron Marabate at (517) 241-7200.

---

Hotel Occupancy in Michigan, February 2007 Report

The latest report from Smith Travel Research on the performance of the U.S. lodging industry shows occupancy in Michigan fell for the second consecutive month in 2007. The February occupancy rate for Michigan was 49.5%, below the national average of 60.2% but above a number of other states. This is in contrast to the last-place standing Michigan held at the end of 2006.

With an occupancy rate of 49.5% for the month of February 2007, Michigan fell 6.6% from the same month last year when its occupancy stood at 53.0%. U.S. occupancy at 60.2% was 1.4% lower than February of last year.

Year-to-date occupancy in Michigan stood at 46.6%, 4.6% lower than the same period last year and the 8th lowest year-to-date occupancy for all states. This performance is somewhat better than the past two years when Michigan's occupancy rates were at, or near, the bottom for nearly three years running. Year-to-date occupancy in the U.S. stood at 56.3%, 1.5% lower than last year.

The Detroit area continues to show a similar performance to that exhibited by Michigan as a whole, though slightly higher than the Michigan average. By the end of 2006, Detroit ranked 25th among the 25 largest U.S. metro markets in occupancy. But for the second month of 2007, Detroit ranked 20th with a year-to-date occupancy rate of 52.8%. This was a 4.2% decline from 2006. While U.S. occupancy was 56.3%, the top 25 markets together stood at 63.2%, 1.2% below February of 2006.

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.

• MDOT's 2007 statewide construction map now available
• MDOT photographers and graphic artists honored for Mackinac Bridge poster designs
• Seven counties benefit from federal Transportation Enhancement grants
• TravelCom Res-Expo
• International Pow Wow 2007
• National Tourism Week
• ESTO
• TIA to Launch New Web Site
• Travel Industry Blueprint Unveiled
• Order Mackinac Bridge 50th Anniversary Posters
• Tourism industry preps for funding push - Crain's Detroit Business
• Travel Commissioners to Unveil Plan to Boost Tourism - 9&10 News
• Long-term tourism plan laid out - Traverse City Record Eagle
• Tourism industry banking on wider ad campaign - Traverse City Record Eagle
• Tourism industry faces steep obstacles - Traverse City Record Eagle