It’s a rite of passage for many families with Michigan Tech freshman. You start looking for hotel rooms to visit during Winter Carnival in November or December only to find out that you needed to be booking six months earlier. That might not be the case this year.
Keweenaw Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Brad Barnett says there are opportunities to book locations within walking distance of the snow statues that will be lining College Avenue and the campus. Barnett says that even though a sizable chunk of reservations were made last year before COVID-19 became a pandemic, question marks around Carnival and what kind of experience Houghton would be able to provide guests have chipped away at plans.
Barnett expects the lodging situation to have an effect on outlying markets like Calumet, L’anse, Baraga, Copper Harbor, and Ontonagon where hotels traditionally benefit from Winter Carnival travel.