(Spirit Lake)– We’re starting to learn more about how COVID-19 impacted tourism the past season in the Iowa Great Lakes and how that impacted hotel-motel tax revenue. Rebecca Peters of Okoboji Tourism told the Dickinson County Board of Supervisors earlier this week that the lakes area actually fared better than the state as a whole…
“Overall our area saw a 10.2 percent decrease in tourism, which sounds kind of bad but when you compare it to the state of Iowa which saw a 24.5 percent decrease in their hotel-motel tax revenue, we did pretty well. And I think we did that because the Okoboji Tourism Committee exists. We had one voice that was in charge of marketing our community and letting people know that this was a safe area for them to visit as long as they were responsible and took the initiatives.”
Peters says they were also able to tailor digital marketing around the pandemic.
She adds they’re very optimistic numbers will turn around for the upcoming season, especially with the roll out of vaccines.
