Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and a host of other influential people will welcome a cruise ship to Mackinac Island today and use the occasion to launch a new campaign they hope will attract the interest of other cruise ships that they’d like to see making regular stops in Great Lakes ports from Chicago to Toronto and beyond. So, will they include St. Joseph as a port of call?
Snyder will lead the coalition of business and government groups hopeful of attracting increased maritime interest for the upper Midwest in what they are calling their “Cruise the Great Lakes” initiative.
The cruise ship Victory 1 from the Great Lakes Cruise Company, anchored in Ann Arbor, routinely tours the Great Lakes already with sister ships including the Pearl Mist which is shown in the photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market. Victory 1 makes Mackinac Island a port of call today as a backdrop to the coalition’s announcement detailing a new marketing effort that includes partners from several states in the Great Lakes region, alongside their Canadian counterparts from several Canadian provinces. Also represented in that collaborative effort are several port authorities and tourism agencies.
Industry projections have shown considerable interest on the part of the traveling public to sail the Great Lakes. In fact, a total of eight ships were forecast to ply the waters of the Great Lakes this year marking an approximated 100,000 port visits by passengers on board. Those projections anticipate “significant growth” in the coming years, with plans already underway for at least two additional cruise ships to take up itineraries by 2020.
The goal of today’s coalition meeting is to drive still further interest from cruise ships not already working the Great Lakes region.
Cruise ships from Chicago used to visit the St. Joseph waterfront for many years decades ago. I reached out to Millicent Huminsky from the Southwestern Michigan Tourist Council to see if she felt we would ever see that sort of action in Michigan’s Great Southwest again, especially if the local harbor became a stop on a multi-city itinerary in the Great Lakes basin. She replied, “Sure! As we all know, St. Joseph is a commercial port, so we could welcome cruise ships.” She notes, “Cruise ships typically dock during the day and move on to their next destination at night. During the day, cruise ship passengers would spend their time in the downtown area, which would bring additional revenue to the merchants.”
Stay tuned. We’ll see what the coalition has planned as they roll out their invitation later today, and share with you any potential plans for the local community to get in on the action one of these days.
