Spurred on by snarky, tongue-in-cheek, billboard messages that encourage them to “Take a Hike,” or “Suck it Up,” and a print campaign screaming things like “Bite Me!” and “In Your Dreams,” the Southwestern Michigan Tourist Council has seen multi-year upticks in website visits and page-views by visitors, and increasing spring and fall shoulder season trips to Michigan’s Great Southwest year-over-year.
The organization hosted its annual meeting at The Heritage Center in St. Joseph this morning, sharing lots of numbers, brief videos and other data to celebrate a stellar year in tourist attraction business they perform on behalf of the lodging and hospitality industries as well as many destination attractions along the way.
Executive Director Millicent Huminsky and her small, but busy, staff showcased key metrics from the past year to show the ever increasing impact their marketing campaigns produce.
The “Take a Hike” billboard shows visitors to a lake front dune. The “Suck it Up” board shows a parade of craft beer glasses filled to the rim. The “Bite Me” add is a delicious ad for the bounty of our fields and orchards showing fresh strawberries. And, the “In Your Dreams” campaign is all about the romance of the region as a wedding destination showing a kissing bride & groom with the North Pier in the background.
The campaign has been running for two years and works to separate itself from other destinations through its playful irreverence. It’s working as reflected in some of the stats shared by Huminsky this morning:
- Visitors from all 50 states, every Canadian Province and 20 foreign countries…
- Assisted more than 80,000 people from walk-ins to phone calls, online queries, e-mails, referrals and the Pick Michigan Program…
- 188 convention and meeting contacts for 106,556 participants leading to 92 confirmed events topping 11,350 confirmed participants and just under 2,500 confirmed Shoreline Assessment Association room nights booked…
- The website www.swmichigan.org witnessed huge increases in web visitors
- Web traffic visits increased by 43.7-percent to 292,218 as compared to 204,193 in 2016…
- Website page-views also increased by 43.7-percent to 579,418 as compared to 445,215 a year earlier…
- The top three areas that web visits originated were Michigan, Illinois and Indiana with visits increasing anywhere from 20.7-percent to almost 32-percent…
- Google searches were up 18.4-percent from 118,866 in 2016 to 180,309 in 2017…
- Proving the popularity of weddings and the Makers Trail, those pages trended dramatically higher year over year with wedding page-views soaring by 323.8-percent and Makers Trail visits by 270.6-percent. Also big were “Plan Your Trip” (+95-percent) and “Entertainment” (+35.1-percent) year over year.
- As work continues to bill the region as a year-round destination, the fall shoulder web visits increased by more than 100-percent with page views climbing nearly 65-percent in September & October of ’16 versus ’17…
- Detroit users soared by 408.7-percent in that shoulder season, with Indianapolis users ratcheting up by 373.4-percent, Chicago visitors by more than 147-percent and Ann Arbor info seekers climbing by 117-percent…
Today’s annual membership meeting marks the 37th anniversary of the Southwestern Michigan Tourist Council and the 32nd year for the Shoreline Hotel/Motel Assessment Association which manages the state-mandated bed tax which is used for marketing purposes. Both organizations are recognized leaders in the Michigan Travel Industry.
Never resting on their laurels, the council today had photographer/videographer Joshua Nowicki and the team from Holt+Bosse on hand to capture new testimonial comments from association members as shown in the photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market where Amy Zapal and Susan Solon were prepping for the photo shoot following today’s meeting. The photo below shows today’s crowd.
