Summer tourism strong in central U.P.

Despite cooler temperatures and unpredictable weather, summer tourism in the central Upper Peninsula is continuing to boom.

Marquette County has become a year-round tourism destination, particularly in the summer months.

Annual activities and events like the Food Festival, Blueberry Festival and Hiawatha have helped to draw in tourists, but it is important to keep adding fresh ideas and new events.

Marquette County Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Pat Black said, “People like that uniqueness. They don’t want to go to a place and see the same old thing. They want something different, and you know there’s a lot of people in Marquette that think out of the box when it comes to uniqueness.”

One of the keys to having a successful tourism destination is to make sure that there is something for everybody to enjoy while making them feel at home.

“I think the people in the county that live here even really get the tourists, and they like to share their story’s with them,” Black added. “We have all these things going on, and we are in the middle of the U.P.”

Black said she won’t have any official tourism numbers for June or July until later this fall. However, she’s confident that the numbers will be as high or higher than they were last year.