No Kidding!

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110516/GPG03/105160459/1247/gpg03/Monday-Q-Visitor-spending-key-state-tourism-industry

Q. Pending approval, the department’s budget could see a $3.5 million boost. What does that do for the agency?

A. It shows the governor has a commitment to growing the tourism economy. I think it’s important that you look across the board of state agencies, what agencies have the ability to market and grow the economy? I think certainly tourism is one of those agencies that has the ability to have a return on the investment.

When you’re going from (a budget of) $10 million to $13-plus million, that represents a fairly nice percentage increase. It’s easy to sit back and say “Michigan is at $25 million,” but we’re not in that frame of mind. We’re saying we really welcome the additional marketing … and it means we’re going to be more visible and more present in our target markets. We’re going to be buying more in Chicago and northern Illinois. We’re going to look at the Twin Cities market and see what we can do effectively to bring those people across the boarder.

It’s a significant increase in our ability to attract more people from those neighboring states… Let’s show we can be effective with the additional dollars. Let’s out-hustle our competitors. Let’s do better public relations than our competitors, and we’ll get our fair share of the tourism pie.

We Need To Keep Those Living Here, To Stay Here, We need Jobs Too!