GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The tourism industry in Green Bay is getting some good news: hotel occupancy numbers are up.
Discover Green Bay CEO Brad Toll says they use hotel occupancy numbers to see just how many people are visiting the area and says occupancy was at 37.9% a year ago, down from 58.4% in 2019.
“This year, 2021, we’re at 51.1%,” Toll told WTAQ. “So it’s a tremendous improvement over 2020, but we aren’t quite back.”
Toll says leisure travel has picked back up.
“Certainly having fans at Lambeau Field has made a huge difference,” he says.
Businesses, however, still haven’t started traveling yet. Toll says until they do, we won’t reach the numbers seen in 2019. He’s optimistic, however, for the year ahead.
“If you’re not meeting with your clients, someone else probably is,” said Toll. “So I think business travel will start to come back.”
Several conferences planned for the area, Toll says, have already been canceled, however, for 2022, and doesn’t anticipate things returning to 2019 levels for at least another year or two.
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