Experience Grand Rapids CEO Doug Small is ready to welcome tourists back to West Michigan.
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Back on the map Experience Grand Rapids works to repair damage done by COVID-19. BY PAT EVANS
// PHOTOS BY ASHLEY WIERENGA
January and February 2020 appeared to set a great trajectory for tourism growth in West Michigan. Experience Grand Rapids was celebrating 10 consecutive years of increased tourism in the community, and it looked like 2020 would be more of the same. But then the world shut down as the COVID-19 pandemic ripped across the globe. “January and February were better than normal, and then the floor fell out,” said Doug Small, president and CEO of Experience Grand Rapids, West Michigan’s convention and tourism organization. “We were expecting to have an 11th-straight record year of hotel room revenue.” Small said the organization no longer focuses so much on room occupancy, but the numbers were startling. Downtown hotels, which were running at about 72% occupancy right before the pandemic, plummeted to less than 10% full for several months in the depths of 2020. The organization had a budget of $11.7 million for the year and Small GR M AG .CO M
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