SPORTS

The final frontier for northern Michigan tourism?

By Craig Manning

Are sports the big untapped frontier for northern Michigan’s tourism economy? Traverse City Tourism and Grand Traverse Resort and Spa think the answer is yes, and are taking sizable steps to harness athletic events as key drivers for future traffic and revenue.

Right now, there are eight hotels either under construction or in the development pipeline in the Traverse City area. If all those projects are built as planned, they will add nearly 800 hotel rooms to the area’s hotel stock – an increase of approximately 20% over the 4,000 or so hotel rooms that currently exist in the area. For Traverse City Tourism (TCT), that increase represents both a huge opportunity and a bit of a burden.

TCT, which earns a per-room assessment tax from each hotel that operates within its jurisdiction, is responsible for marketing the area as a destination and helping hotels fill those rooms yearround. Speaking last fall to TCBN sister publication The Ticker , TCT President and CEO Trevor Tkach expressed both excitement and apprehension about the area’s growing hospitality scene.

“It’s always exciting for us to see new and fresh product in the market,” Tkach said. “And there’s definitely demand for it at certain times of the year. But we also know we have to work hard to keep all of our transient options viable throughout the year. That is a challenge, and as we get more of these units in market, it’s going to become a bigger challenge.”

According to Tkach, Traverse City has more than enough tourism demand in the summer months to keep all the area’s hotels busy.

“Where I think we need to be mindful is with the other three seasons,” he said. “And that’s what TCT is here to help do. Keeping the travel economy strong throughout the year, keeping small businesses viable, and keeping workers fully employed and making better wages – those are our goals.”

It goes without saying that off-season Traverse City is missing perhaps the biggest draw of the summertime, which is glorious weather ideal for swimming, boating, sunbathing, outdoor dining, and other activities.

But northern Michigan is also missing something else in the colder months that the summertime has in spades: a calendar jam-packed with events. From festivals to races to concerts and beyond, the months between May and September are filled with things to do for locals and

Graham said he’ll be looking to use both his sports background and his experience with concerts, shows, festivals, and other live draws as he works to attract new events to the Traverse City region.

In particular, Graham is hopeful that he can bring events to the area that not only draw tourists and fill hotel rooms, but which also appeal to locals. In the visitors alike. October through April, on the other hand? Those months are (much) more barren on the events front. TCT’s biggest plan for filling 800 new hotel rooms is aimed directly at that lack. fall of 2021, Graham helped execute what he calls “the two largest events in Turtle Creek Stadium history” – the first a concert by the country band Old Dominion, the second a tour stop by the action sports performing crew Nitro Circus.

Graham said of splashy live events.

If there’s going to be a bread and butter to Graham’s events focus, though, it’s likely to be athletics.

Local tourism professionals have already been working in recent years to attract more sporting tournaments to the region. Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, for instance, has long hosted tennis tournaments at its health club, and for many years served as a venue for Special Olympics Michigan.

Last year, the Resort took its athletic focus one step further, purchasing portable sports flooring that allows the property to convert its tennis courts into temporary basketball courts. The Resort premiered the new feature in February 2022 for an Amateur Athletic Union basketball tournament that drew an attendance of nearly 800 people across 34 youth basketball teams.

In November, TCT announced that it had hired Mickey Graham as its first-ever director of sports and events. Graham comes to the role fresh off four years as general manager of the Traverse City Pit Spitters, where he also oversaw a variety of non-baseball events hosted at Turtle Creek Stadium.

Both events moved boatloads of tickets and drew attendees from all throughout northern Michigan...and beyond.

“I think we showed with those events at Turtle Creek Stadium that there’s a market for those types of things here,”

Per Resort Communications Manager Caroline Rizzo, the sports flooring has generated strong return on investment throughout the first year of its deployment. Perhaps most notably, the Resort inked a partnership with FAAST Sports, a southeast Michigan-based organization that plans sports tournaments, leagues, and camps around the state, and has half a dozen tournaments scheduled with that brand throughout 2023.

Also on the docket: a three-day Detroit Pistons Academy youth basketball camp that the Resort hosted in the summer of 2022. That event, Rizzo said, “sold out in just a few days” and drew boys and girls from all across Michigan; the Resort hopes to work with the Pistons on similar camps in the future.

“Each tournament we’ve hosted, we’ve seen room nights increase from attendees,” Rizzo said. “More and more families have realized you get to stay here and play here. You never have to leave the property.”

In addition to confirmed FAAST engagements, potential future partnerships with the Pistons, and other basketball events, Rizzo added that the Resort also has numerous other athletic tournaments on the schedule for 2023, including for volleyball and wrestling.

When the Resort first announced the sports flooring investment last year, the hotel shared three main goals for the new offering: that it would expand the property’s demographic reach, that it would boost shoulder season business, and that it would generate over 1,000 room nights per year.

So far, Rizzo said, the investment is exceeding expectations. The Detroit Pistons camp, for instance, was the first program of its kind that the Pistons organization had ever hosted in northern Michigan. Tournament traffic, meanwhile, is doing its job of injecting extra activity into the fall and winter months. While those events vary in size, Rizzo told the TCBN that even smaller tournaments tend to bring a fair amount of business during slower months like November or March.

“We have had more than 30 teams at some tournaments,” Rizzo said. “Those teams have come from across northern Michigan, southeast and southwest Detroit, mid-Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. Each team has 8-12 players, plus coaches and player’s families. So, there are times we have more than 550 people here for tournaments.”

The Resort’s success in morphing itself into more of a sporting venue, Tkach said, is proof that athletics is a largely untapped area of potential for local tourism. And it’s not just out-of-town events and organizations that are clamoring for more indoor sports infrastructure in northern Michigan.

“We’ve seen significant interest from our own community to have more sporting events and more recreational facilities available throughout the year,” Tkach noted. “I’m predicting we will see that start to come to fruition over the next five years. There is enough interest and enough demand, and now that we see these new rooms in market, there’s definitely justification to start to build more resources to help bring sports tournaments here, and then to use those events to fill rooms and keep businesses busy year-round.”

Already, there are investments happening for indoor sports facilities in northern Michigan. The new Traverse City Curling Club facility coming online at the Cherryland Center is one example. The promise of new indoor pickleball courts at a planned development in Acme Township – at the old Kmart/Tom’s Food Markets property – is another.

The elephant in the room on that front is the possibility of a dedicated indoor sports complex in Traverse City. That project has been a popular topic of discussion in the region for years, with TCT serving as one of the core advocates. In 2018, TCT even conducted a feasibility study to look into the idea in more depth.

As of yet, no firm vision for the project has materialized – let alone the complex itself.

According to Graham, talks about the sports complex are still ongoing – even if there’s no concrete update on what might come next.

“There’s a group that’s been meeting about (the indoor sports complex project), and I know that group has had a few meetings recently, but I don’t think there are any major updates,” Graham said. “I know it’s a project this group really sees as an important piece to the region, and they’ve been working hard trying to see how they can get it done.”