• Winter is the slow season Up North, so  communities are adding cold-weather events to lure tourists 
• Ice festivals, winter triathlons and hockey tournaments have had some success, drawing hundreds of people
• There are more hotel stays this year, but recent heavy snows could’ve brought people north for staple events such as snowmobiling and skiing

An avid athlete who competes in triathlons, Gaylord resident Meagan Rinck admits she sometimes found Michigan winter months dreary, especially with no races to run.

“When the tri season would end because it was getting cold, I would get bored,” said Rinck, a payor enrollment specialist for Munson Healthcare. “I would start cross-country skiing and fat-tire biking and running in the snow with my friends, and I thought, I should make this a triathlon.”

Four years ago, she did just that, partnering with the Gaylord Area Convention and Tourism Bureau to kick off Tri 45, which combines cross-country skiing, fat-tire bicycling and running. The USA Triathlon-certified event — one of only a handful of winter races in the country — draws dozens of racers, most of them from downstate.

The fourth annual race kicks off Saturday at Gaylord’s Treetops Resort.

Gaylord isn’t alone: Throughout northern Michigan, tourism officials want to extend the tourism season by adding cold-weather events.

Winter tourism pushes aren’t new, said Trevor Tkach, president and CEO of Traverse City Tourism and a board member at the Michigan Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus. 

He called it “a forever issue,” but said there is an uptick of tourism officials in creative ways to draw visitors year-round, especially after a string of mild winters hurt tourism from skiers and snowmobilers. 

“There’s maybe an increased interest as more communities are trying to be open and attractive year-round,” Tkach said. “It’s trying to figure out what the magic bullet is: What’s that event that’s actually going to tip the scale?”

Tourism was a $29.3 billion industry across Michigan in 2023, according to the latest figures from the Michigan Economic Development Corp., up 12% from 2018. 

Northern Michigan accounted for 17% of all Michigan visitor spending in 2023, up from 15% of all spending five years prior.

Tourism is especially important in northern Michigan, where the industry is responsible for 9% to 15% of all jobs, depending on the region, compared to 6% of all jobs statewide, according to the state.

Besides the Tri 45, Gaylord recently added an oval-track snowmobile race. Alpena a few years ago resurrected its long-dormant Ice Festival and added a downtown New Year’s Eve event this year.

Houghton brought back a street snowboarding contest in 2023. St. Ignace and Copper Harbor have added fat-tire bike and cross country ski trails. Hancock hosted its first Snow Sculpting Invitational this past weekend. Sault Ste. Marie is remodeling the track for its International 500 snowmobile race in hopes of adding more events, and spectators, to the arena.

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“Summer is naturally busy,” said Anne Gentry, executive director of the Alpena Downtown Development Authority. “People are traveling, kids are out of school, the weather’s nice … Having a year-round schedule of events, first off, it’s really beneficial to businesses. And people want fun things to do year-round.”

A bump in tourism

Officials report higher hotel occupancy rates this year, but it’s unclear whether that bump came from new events or the return of heavy snow after several mild winters kept skiers and snowmobilers away.

December hotel occupancies fell for two years in a row, but climbed 8% in northern Michigan in 2024, according to the latest figures from Michigan. Statewide, the year-over-year increase that month was 0.9%.

In Alpena, hundreds of people attended this year’s Ice Festival this month. Gentry said the downtown Alpena Holiday Inn was booked solid for the city’s first-ever downtown New Year’s Eve party. 

Linda Hoath, executive director of the Sault Ste. Marie Visitors Bureau, said her region saw a 12% year-over-year boost in hotel stays last month, which she attributed to new events, marketing and heavy snow.

Visit Keweenaw Executive Director Brad Barnett said preliminary numbers show the region saw a 10% to 20% year-over-year uptick in hotel occupancy during the weekend of a freestyle snowboarding competition in Houghton on Feb. 15.

Barnett said longtime cold weather events like Michigan Tech’s Winter Carnival also continue to make an impact on the region, pulling in 3,000 visitors over just a couple days. Barnett said that translates into $1.2 million in spending on shopping, restaurants and lodging.

Not everyone has seen much of a bump.

In St. Ignace, the region drops from about 1,500 daily hotel stays during the warmer months down to 400 when it gets cold, and, “when we look at our assessments, we don’t really see that change that much,” said Lora Brown, director of the St. Ignace Visitors Bureau. 

Selling winter 

The increase in winter events and marketing for cold weather recreation follows years when the weather didn’t cooperate. 

Last year was the warmest winter on record for Michigan, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The UP 200 dog sled race in Marquette had to cancel for its second year in a row and the weather caused the Michigan Ice Fest to cancel three days of climbing events. Ski resorts have pivoted, either by investing in snowmaking technology, drawing people indoors or promoting activities in other seasons.

This year’s blast of heavy snow has brought visitors back above the 45th parallel. According to the National Weather Service, normally, at this point in the season, Gaylord would have had about 121 inches of snow. So far this year, the city had 182 inches as of Tuesday.

“This has been a nice back-to-basics,” said Cody Sovis, of Oneupweb, a Traverse City-based digital marketing agency with clients that include the area’s Downtown Development Authority and ski resorts. “They've got to go back to their more traditional playbook.”

“There’s a ton of snowmobile trailers in our parking lots right now,” Brown, the St. Ignace tourism official, said last week. “The more snow, the more ice, the better we do. If it’s gonna be winter, we like the cold and the snow.”

Partnerships key

Communities sometimes struggle to pull off winter events because, with so many snowbirds down south, event organizers can have trouble finding enough volunteers.

The Boyne City Winter Festival was canceled this year “due to lack of volunteers, participation and safety personnel,” event organizer April Colston told the Boyne Citizen. People weren’t in the mood to celebrate winter, she said.

Gentry of the Alpena DDA said partnerships are key to pulling off cold-weather events. Her group partnered with the Thunder Bay Arts Council nonprofit to bring back the Ice Festival and relied on help from the city, whose workers built a sledding hill and whose fire department built a massive bonfire that helped draw people to the Lake Huron shoreline.

“Those are the only ways that these events happen is having other organizations help out,” Gentry said.

Gentry added that, while events such as the Ice Festival bring visitors to town who otherwise wouldn’t come, they also give natives something to do and a reason to leave the house when they’re feeling snowbound.

That’s part of why Rinck, of Gaylord, launched the Tri 45 winter triathlon. She wanted to add something to her town

“I would love to have some more events to try and get people here,” she said. “I would like to see Gaylord do more than just downhill skiing and snowmobiling advertising.”