Tourism patterns and determinants in the Great Lakes Region: populations, resources, roads, and perceptions

Abstract

The Great Lakes Region of North America is attractive to tourists because of its vast areas of water, thousands of kilometers of shorelines, huge public forests, numerous parks, extensive commercial tourist facilities, interesting cities, and good highways. Most of the region's 65 million residents live in the southern industrial and agricultural portion so summer recreational travel is largely in a northerly direction to the lakes, shorelines, forests, and privately owned seasonal homes known as “cottages”. This travel involves international border crossings as Americans travel to rural and urban tourism destinations in Ontario, Canadians visit cities in the United States, and residents of both nations take circular tours around the Great Lakes. Each year, Ontario and neighboring American states spend a total of more than 20 million on tourism publicity trying to capture a larger share of the 40 billion spent in the region annually by tourists. However, the amount, nature, and patterns of tourist travel across the border are not well documented because of the lack of exit surveys.