Despite concerns about summer tourism earlier this year, East Lansing business owners aren’t worried about sales dropping during the city’s summer festival season.
But Lori Martin, a research specialist at MSU’s Travel, Tourism and Recreation Resource Center, said the tourism outlook for 2002 is uncertain while the nation recovers from recession.
“There are a few wild cards out there,” she said.
Those wild cards include the possibility of terrorism, weather and gas prices.
Despite the unknowns, the center’s researchers expect increases in tourism throughout the state, including a 3 percent increase in traffic volume due to tourism in the region including Ingham County.
And East Lansing officials aren’t expecting much of a drop-off as the Great Lakes Folk Festival and East Lansing Art Festival near.
“It seems like people are looking for more things that they can spend time with their family or friends,” community events specialist E. Kelcey Anderson said.
Anderson said the festivals traditionally draw people from across county and state lines.
“I think with the Great Lakes Folk Festival it’s that there are a lot of people from throughout Michigan,” she said. “But then I think it’s become the event that people invite people from out of state.”
The festivals annually draw millions of people who bring their wallets and purses, said Kent Love, director of marketing communications for the Greater Lansing Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Love said in 2000, the area brought in about 5 million visitors who spent $431 million.
Of that, Love said a good portion could be attributed to visitors to the festivals.
“We’re not really sure,” he said. “But in terms of jobs we rank them up there in at least the top five in tourism industry.”
For Cory Curtis, owner of Cool Creations, 209 E. M.A.C. Ave., the art festival could be the No. 1 sales event of the year.
Curtis hand makes gifts to sell and put in the store window during the festival to make up for sales slumps after students leave.
“(The festival) helps us get through May,” she said. “And part of June.”
Curtis said she doesn’t expect much to be different - people might not buy as much, she said, but it won’t be significant.
As long as she can get her wares in the public eye, Curtis said she should be fine this summer.
“We’ll try to get people in here somehow,” she said. “That’s the hard part.”
