I am one of the people who really enjoy the Pure Michigan (award winning ad campaign, I might add) tourism radio and tv ads. So, just for fun on this Friday afternoon I thought I would share the ad that runs in the fall. You can view all of the ads and vote [...]

The place to be this summer for Michigan residents is . . . Michigan, of course. Gas prices will most likely range from $4 to $4.50 a gallon this summer which means summer trips might be restricted to in-state trips.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Michigan has plenty to offer and a lot of places are even offering discounts and gas cards to make sure you give them a try. An article in today’s Detroit Free Press has the details on what different towns and businesses are doing to help out with the high price of fuel.

For ideas on what Michigan has to offer check out these Squidoo pages I have created:

Camping in Michigan
Best of Michigan
Mackinac Bridge
Indoor Water Park Hotels in Michigan
Michigan Vacation Getaway
Top 10 Michigan Wonders

Michigan’s $11.3 million ad campaign, Pure Michigan, began in earnest this week to tout the benefits of visiting Michigan to the midwest. The ads will target Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Ontario through July. Tim Allen narrates the ads which backers hope will increase the number of visitors to Michigan and the [...]

Funny, but they gave the same estimate for growth last year. More money was spent on advertising Michigan as a tourism destination and guess what? The number of tourists in 2006 remained flat - it was pretty much the same as 2005.
Since the results were so good last year (sarcasm here folks) Michigan [...]

There are rumors flying around that Grayling might some day be home to an amusement park called Main Street USA. 1,800 acres of state-owned land along I-75 just south of Grayling have been available for commercial or industrial development for the past five years. Axiom Entertainment has had discussions with state officials regarding [...]

Traffic at the Mackinac Bridge is down for the eighth year in a row. Currently it is down 2% from last year. Traffic counts in Cadillac and Traverse City also show a decline from the previous year.
State parks have had fewer campers and less out-of-state visitors. Businesses across northern Michigan [...]

A $2.8 million advertising campaign for Michigan tourism uses the catch phrase “Pure Michigan.” Scenes of our many waterways with a voiceover by actor Tim Allen (from Home Improvement fame) will soon be playing to potential tourists in Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Southern Ontario. These are areas we already receive tourists from and the [...]

Governor Granholm was in Traverse City on Tuesday pushing for increasing money spent on marketing our state for tourism. Read my related post on this - Increase the State’s Marketing Budget? Granholm is claiming that Michigan’s legislators (Republicans) are making political statements in this election year by dragging their feet on her proposal.
Michigan [...]

An interesting editorial in the Detroit Free Press makes the case for Michigan to increase it’s marketing budget to gain more tourism dollars. It would be great to see more tourism dollars spent in Michigan as a result of an increased marketing budget.
However, I would like to see funding for this to [...]

An article in the Detroit News predicts that Michigan’s tourism industry (our state’s second largest industry) should increase by 2% this year. I am not sure how you come up with an estimate like that. The hard evidence that does exist is that travel agencies and hotels are seeing an increase already from [...]