(Spirit Lake)– Tourism numbers so far are on target with a year ago at this time, with the season soon to be winding down. Kiley Zankowski of Vacation Okoboji says nearly 600,000 people have visited the Iowa Great Lakes so far this season…
“Our numbers in May, we were up about four percent with actual number of visits up seven percent, and a little bit longer length of stay, which was great to see especially in that very beginning part of summer season. June we were down a little bit, about three percent in visitation, but we were still averaging 50 to 60 thousand visitors per weekend and actually saw slightly longer lengths of stay, 3.3 days in our area. July, so far, looks like it was almost exactly even with last year, welcoming 380,000 people just in the month of July alone, and 100,000 of those coming over the 4th of July. It was really exciting to look at our visitation locations and we actually had visitors from 48 states come for the 4th of July.”
Zankowski adds where those people are coming from hasn’t changed much, either from previous years…
“23 percent of our visitors come from the Sioux City area, 16 percent from Des Moines, 15 percent from Sioux Falls, 11 percent from Minneapolis, and 10 percent from Omaha, so really great visitation numbers, and great growth coming from the Cedar Rapids area as well.”
She attributes that largely to their ongoing marketing efforts in those areas.
