In 1990, Michigan appropriated $13 million to fund the Michigan Travel Bureau, which later was renamed Travel Michigan. Unfortunately, in the years since that funding has slowly dwindled down to just $5.7 million, dropping our state’s promotion budget from 7th largest to 31st largest nationwide.
Such an anemic budget allowed Travel Michigan to engage in a small regional ad campaign focusing only on markets in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. As that budget grew smaller with each passing year, Michigan’s tourism industry was forced to become increasingly reliant on its resident base for tourism outcomes.
Such an approach worked reasonably well in the late 1990s and into 2000, but in March of 2001 a national recession hit, followed by the events of 9/11 which decimated tourism outcomes nationwide. Michigan’s, whose auto and general manufacturing base is in transition, was especially hard hit and has yet to recover. Bankruptcies of large firms like Delphi, and relocation of manufacturing plants to other states with more favorable economic climates have lead to high unemployment levels and equally low levels of consumer confidence.
Because leisure travel outcomes rise and fall on discretionary spending, Michigan’s tourism industry has been especially hard hit. In fact, last year hotel occupancy levels, which are generally accepted by experts as a good barometer of tourism outcomes, were 50th overall – the absolute worst nationwide.
