With fall definitely here, Traverse City has closed the book on another summer tourist season. And how did it grade out?  The Ticker spanned the area to measure the summer of 2018 – and heard mostly positive reports.
 
The Festivals
The National Cherry Festival hit a spot of bad luck on its opening weekend this year, with temperatures climbing into the high 90s on Saturday and a storm rolling through Sunday night. Collectively, Festival Director Kat Paye thinks that weather likely had a significant impact on the attendance and atmosphere of the festival.
 
“Initially, when we thought about this year versus 2017, we thought the weather affected us a lot,” Paye says. “It wasn’t as bad as we thought, but things were down a little from 2017. Even in a Blue Angels year, as much as we love them, it was a challenging opening weekend for us.”
 
Paye says that concession sales – including beer, soft drinks, ice cream and food – were down approximately 15 percent this year compared to 2017. The festival also had to cancel Sunday night’s concert and refund all the tickets – something Paye describes as “a big hit for us, but not as big as we expected.”
 
Elsewhere, the festival experienced smaller dips compared to the previous year. For instance, the Festival of Races saw 180 fewer runners this year than in 2017, though it still drew more than 2,500 participants.
 
The Traverse City Film Festival had slightly better luck. Despite upheaval surrounding the hiring and subsequent departure of a new festival director, Acting Director Meg Weichman says the festival saw a 1.67 percent increase in admissions this year, from approximately 120,000 tickets in 2017 to approximately 122,000 in 2018.
 
Travel & Lodging
Traverse City Tourism President Trevor Tkach says area hotel occupancy was up approximately 4 percent in June and 1-2 percent in July and August. He also points out the effect of the short-term rental properties, noting that his data indicates there are more than 300 short-term rental homes and and apartments in the area. “Having more than 300 additional rentals in Traverse City is like having three Hotel Indigos in town,” Tkach says.

Traffic at Cherry Capital Airport was 80,460 passengers in July, up four percent versus a year ago and representing an all-time high number for July. For the month Cherry Capital also posted the third highest airport traffic numbers in the state, behind Detroit Metro Airport and Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids. 
 
The Grand Traverse Resort and Spa had a big summer. VP of Finance Scott Chouinard says room occupancy for the month of June was up 8.5 percent from the same month in 2017, while overall revenue was up 9.3 percent. For August, the increases were even bigger: 10.4 percent in room occupancy and 15.7 percent in revenue. The Resort also had more people out on the golf course this summer, clocking a 9.9 percent year-over-year jump in June.
 
The strong summer figures could help buoy the Resort to a new milestone, according to PR Manager Jillian Manning. “2016 was our best year in a decade, and 2018 is pacing to be even better,” she says.
 
Downtown Retail 
Summer was also fruitful time for many local businesses. Troy Daily, owner of Kayak, Bike & Brew says his business was up 10 percent from 2017, while Nat Gray, CPA and Controller at Cherry Republic, says Traverse City store revenues grew “in excess of 5 percent.”
 
For Bill Golden of Golden Shoes, the summer of 2018 was perhaps the biggest in his store’s long history. Starting with a 25 percent year-over-year revenue increase in May, Golden says he kept smashing his own business records for most of the summer.
 
“June was my best June ever, and was probably about my seventh biggest month ever,” Golden says. “And then July ended up being the biggest month we’ve ever had. Ever. By a substantial amount, too.”
 
“Overall, the numbers of people downtown were just unbelievable,” he continues. “We obviously have our locals who we see regularly, but it was a new crowd every single day during those months. It was incredible to see all the new faces every day. I noticed that this year more than ever before.”