Beating The Curve: A Look at Traverse City’s Grade-A Summer 2025 Tourism Season

There were multiple barriers in the way of Traverse City having its normally robust summer tourism season this year.

It didn’t matter.

As the dust settles on summer 2025, early data shows visitors were largely undeterred by any and all challenges. Cherry Capital Airport (TVC) saw the busiest travel days in its history, and is pacing well ahead of its record-breaking 2024 numbers. And when asked by The Ticker for his annual letter-grade assessment of the summer tourism season, Trevor Tkach, president and CEO of Traverse City Tourism (TCT), is more upbeat than he’s been in years.

“This summer was an A, and it might even be an A-plus,” Tkach says. “And I say that because I think a lot of destinations have really struggled this year. Based on a lot of the early indicators, in Traverse City, in Grand Traverse County, and in the region, we're outperforming most other markets. Looking at our hotel occupancy numbers, we saw more demand than the previous year, and that demand is also outpacing the new supply that’s coming to market.”

The area’s glut of new hotel developments has caused many locals – Tkach included – to question whether Traverse City’s tourism scene was reaching oversaturation. At least for the summer months, though, the numbers show TC can support the growth.

“I'm looking at the monthly Smith Travel Research report for the month of July – I don't have August yet – and it’s showing our room availability for that month grew by almost 5 percent, and our demand went up by almost 8 percent,” Tkach says. “So, we increased our inventory, but we also grew demand greater than the inventory.”

Tkach still has some concerns about filling all those hotel rooms in the off-season, especially with even more new properties under development in the area. “I think there’s a finite amount of demand when it comes to winter, and we’ll have to work really hard to move the needle at that time of year,” he admits.

Nevertheless, Tkach views the summer numbers as “a great sign” that the region still has a mighty durable travel economy. Nationally, he says, conversations about this summer’s tourist season are decidedly more mixed.

“There were a lot of challenges this summer [to tourist destinations],” Tkach explains. “You still have people concerned about their finances. It’s been shared that there are fewer travelers coming into U.S. markets from Canada, so a lot of destinations – especially in the Midwest – have been negatively affected by that. And locally, I’d say we fought a lot of bad weather. But despite all these variables, we’ve kept our head above water, especially compared to others.”

It’s not just hotels that are outperforming expectations. Tkach says metrics show everything from an uptick in downtown TC foot traffic to a busier season at local wineries. And speaking of increased traffic, arguably no local institution has seen more growth recently than TVC, which continued its recent tear of record-breaking activity this summer.

According to Autumn MacClaren, TVC’s director of air service development and marketing, the airport’s year-to-date passenger tally at the end of July was 532,266, up a whopping 22.4 percent over the first seven months of 2024 – itself a record. TVC also broke its one-day record for total passengers in July. August numbers, MacClaren says, “are still being finalized."

The big summer virtually guarantees TVC another record-breaking year. In 2024, the airport logged 787,114 passengers for the full 12-month period, its biggest year ever. 2024 was up 12.3 percent over 2023, which had also been a record-breaker.

Per MacClaren, the spike in airport activity is leading airline partners to extend their seasonal routes outside of the summer months, including deeper into the fall.

“One standout is United’s Denver route, which now runs through December 1 – a major extension from last year’s September end date,” she tells The Ticker. Other highlights include JetBlue, hot off its first summer at TVC, which will continue nonstop service to Boston through October 22; American Airlines, which is extending its Dallas route through October 13; and Delta Airlines, which will keep its Minneapolis flight going through October 5.

And what of northern Michigan’s newest summertime festival, Traverse City Food & Wine? After years of talking about the need for a late-summer event to fill the void left by the Traverse City Film Festival, Tkach and his team took it upon themselves to create that new offering this year, which he describes as an attempt to bring “a high-end epicurean classic type event into market.”

“It worked very well,” Tkach says of the festival, which ran from August 20-24. 

The five-day festival ultimately spanned 80 events at a variety of venues throughout the region, including wineries on both Old Mission and Leelanau peninsulas, Traverse City restaurants, and the Open Space.

“I haven’t been able to do a total deep dive into the data yet, but I did pull the numbers for the Open Space,” Tkach says, referring to “The Grand Tasting,” TC Food & Wine’s culminating event on Saturday, August 23 (pictured). “There were roughly 1,600 people at that event, and 45 percent of them were from beyond 100 miles. So, people made a decision to travel into market and spend some time and money here, and anecdotally, we saw people from all across the country. Some people already knew who we were, but for others, it was their first time being exposed to our market, and the food scene is what lured them in.”

Tkach confirms that Food & Wine will be back next year, saying that TCT is “tentatively penciling it in for that same week” in 2026. But moving the festival to a different week, or even expanding it beyond the five-day configuration, are among the modifications the team is considering.

“The nice thing about Food & Wine was that it didn't feel like it was overwhelming to the community,” Tkach says. “People were going to all these different venues, so the domain was spread throughout the region. It wasn't all hyper-focused in one area. So, it gave a lift to our local economy, hopefully without exacerbating any other issues that the community might have with large special events.”