Tourists vs. Locals

Balancing economic growth with quality of life

By Isabelle Plamondon | March 15, 2025

This article is written by Isabelle Plamondon, a student at Northwest Ed Career Tech Center.

Traverse City has always been a popular tourist destination. From our sandy beaches to our wonderful hiking trails, we are not lacking when it comes to memorable landmarks and beautiful scenery. As a result of the natural amenities of our region, Traverse City is a desirable place to live and visit. It’s been a tourist destination for over 120 years, so it’s nothing new.

What is relatively new, however, is the conversation about how increased tourism affects our town.

According to Pure Michigan’s 2023 Statewide Travel Visitation Report, 14.2 million people visited the Northwest Region in 2023. Per the report, the Northwest Region includes Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Kalkaska, Antrim, Charlevoix, and Emmet counties. (Data for 2024 is not yet available.)

This is compared to the 10.6 million travelers captured in the same reporting from Pure Michigan in 2022 and the 14.0 million travelers from 2021.

These numbers are likely to continue rising in 2025, especially since The Wall Street Journal recently named Traverse City as one of the “10 Best Places to Go in 2025.”

Not Everyone Gets to Live in Traverse City

As tourism grows, locals face new challenges, from skyrocketing housing prices and difficulty staffing businesses to infrastructure strain and small-town growing pains.

“Property values have continued to increase due to the desirability to live here and visit here, and it’s challenging for year-round residents to find housing,” says President and Chief Executive Officer of Traverse Connect, Warren Call.

Housing affordability can limit the workforce for Traverse City, as it may be difficult for people to get safe transportation from outside the city to their place of work.

It’s a reflection on the local saying “Not everyone gets to live in Traverse City.” Traverse City’s Mayor, Amy Shamroe, believes “Saying that is an excuse for having people have to drive 45+ minutes to come work at the bookstores or restaurants you frequent. It’s not sustainable, and it’s a problem because we’re losing young people.”

Affordability for the workforce isn’t the only issue that city officials are concerned about. Tourism has also had an impact on the city’s infrastructure.

“Pure Michigan collects a tax on hotel reservations, then it all goes into a big pot and gets put right back into bringing more tourists here,” says Traverse City Commissioner Heather Shaw. She adds that “The state needs to help us balance the needs of our residents with tourism by putting some of that Pure Michigan money back into our infrastructure.”

Shamroe echoes this sentiment. “Right now, there’s no mechanism for the city or counties to collect tax money from the typical tourist things, even though they have an impact on our infrastructure.”

Overtourism—when too many people visit an area and strain a destination’s services, infrastructure, and/or environment—is also a concern.

“I think that we could end up like places like Venice or Paris, where we’re overwhelmed with tourism in the summertime,” Shaw says. For Venice particularly, this has been a problem, with day trippers infringing upon local life and threatening famous landmarks, leading the city to require a tourism fee to visit at peak times.

Businesses Need Visitors

Tourism may inflate our housing prices and wear on our roads, but it also brings a vital economic boost to the area. Many businesses in downtown Traverse City are independently owned and operated, and they rely on visitor spending to keep the doors open.

“A lot of retail businesses will tell me that they make all their money in the summer and that’s how they budget some of their stuff for the rest of the year,” Shamroe says.

According to the 2023 Tourism Economic Impact Report from Pure Michigan, visitors spent about $630.8 million in Grand Traverse County in 2023. Visitors spent $583.8 million in 2022 and $493.2 million in 2021.

The Pure Michigan report also found that 55 percent of people visiting the Northwest Region in 2023 shopped in locally owned businesses. (The average rate for U.S. tourists shopping in independently owned stores in 2023 was 42 percent, putting us 13 percent higher than the norm.)

“If we didn’t have tourism, businesses wouldn’t be open year-round,” says Trevor Tkach, CEO and President of Traverse City Tourism (TCT).

A Traverse City for Us and Them

If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that tourism is here to stay. “A misconception people tend to have about tourism is that we can somehow wave a wand and have it go away, which is not possible,” Call explains.

So how does Traverse City maintain its small-town charm and livability for residents without losing the much-needed tourism revenue?

“An effective way to keep businesses open year-round and spread out when people visit our region is to diversify tourism,” says Tkach.

According to Tkach, this means advertising more than just the beaches, Cherry Festival, and wine tours, which tend to bring in the most tourists. Instead, he says TCT is emphasizing advertising for other events or activities in different seasons, like skiing and color tours.

Shaw takes it one step further. “It’s not just about our beaches and sand dunes, it’s also about all this cultural infrastructure that’s been built over many decades, and Pure Michigan and the tourism industry need to be more respectful of that.” To Shaw, this means highlighting the musicians, artists, and writers who work and live here, too.

Shamroe believes that emphasizing community and building bridges between locals and tourists can also help.

“We sometimes underestimate the connections to the community that tourism has brought to us,” she says, explaining that without some of the city’s cornerstone events, we wouldn’t have as many opportunities to connect with friends, neighbors, and strangers.

As for us locals? We can be part of building a better TC experience, too. Go to farmers markets, frequent locally-owned businesses, and support our arts and culture scenes. This keeps the money in the community, creates stable jobs for residents, and preserves Traverse City’s unique identity and community.

As Shaw says, “We make a place where people really want to live and stay and start businesses and families, and that is your economic growth.”