Comment on Tourism to Sleeping Bear Dunes creates over $231 million in economic benefits by John Volk

It would be nice to know the methodology for the reports and to see it done by someone who can be objective about it. Doing the math – dividing the number of visitors by a generous 365 days / year –
produces an average daily visitor count of about 4,600 – about 3 times the combined population of Empire and Glen Arbor! I really think the number of days the park actually attracts significant numbers of visitors is significantly less, maybe 240 days. Outside the height of the tourist season – six to eight weeks – it’s hard for me to imagine those kinds of numbers of people running around Leelanau County, and the related the lodging and traffic the rest of the year. The government and chambers of commerce all have vested interests in puffing these numbers and it reminds me of big city government justifying the use of taxpayer money to fund a new stadium by extolling the economic value to the average homeowner who can’t even afford tickets to a game.