WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis. — As the holiday weekend ramps up, National Travel and Tourism Week is winding down in Wisconsin.
All week long, the state’s tourism secretary has traveled alongside the governor for a glimpse at some of the very best spots the Badger State has to offer.
This year’s tourism week follows up on last year’s announcement that Wisconsin had a record-breaking year in 2022 and generated $23.7 billion in economic impact from tourism.
For Wisconsin Dells, where the governor visited Thursday, that amounted to an overall 10.2% boost.
Now, stakeholders are trying to find more ways to showcase the state.
“Wisconsin has a product that we know tourists are looking for,” Wisconsin Dept. of Tourism Secretary Anne Sayers said. “Everything from the outdoor recreation opportunities to the arts and culture, the culinary experiences that are so popular right now.”
After a Dells Boat Tours ride on Thursday, Sayers summed up the state of tourism across Wisconsin in just one word.
“Strong,” Sayers said. “The state of tourism is incredibly strong right now. More than 174,000 of our friends and neighbors, their livelihoods depend on tourism in one way or another, so this is an industry that is contributing to the state’s economy in such a big way.”
Using federal pandemic relief funds, the governor has directed more than $1 billion toward economic resilience, with $200 million of that invested in the travel and tourism industries since 2020, according to his office.
“All the different tourism areas in the state of Wisconsin are working together, and so that takes money, and those investments that happen with the Department of Tourism pay off big time across the state of Wisconsin,” Gov. Tony Evers explained.
“The numbers are growing all the time, and so with the help of Amtrak, we’re going to be bringing more people into the state of Wisconsin for tourism, and that helps our economy. It helps all of us as Wisconsinites,” Evers added.
The latest budget signed by Gov. Evers also invested nearly $34 million over two years to help put Wisconsin on the map as a premiere place to work and play.
“We put these dollars to work right away to help get the word out and build this economy, and as you can see, it’s doing really well for our communities,” Sayers explained.
For her, those dollars are an investment, not an expenditure.
“When you invest in tourism, we can turn a dollar into many more dollars, and it does us no good to be sitting on these well-kept secrets if we aren’t letting people come in and experience our product,” Sayers added.
“Wisconsin has proved in recent years that we can host these really large-scale events and do it very well. We originally had the DNC back in 2020, such that it was. We had the Ryder Cup. We had the U.S. Senior Open last year. We have RNC coming up, we have Indy Car coming back, [and] we’ve got the NFL Draft next year. I mean, we are on a big, global stage at this point, and we are going to want to stay there and make sure that as people are tuning in from across the world and watching these big events happen, they are learning a little something more about Wisconsin and why they should come [to] make their vacation memories here,” Sayers said.