A story in The St. Ignace News' ongoing series bringing our readers fresh perspectives on the top issues facing the Straits area and the Eastern Upper Peninsula.

When inviting people from Germany and England to visit the Great Lakes region, you have to first understand what will motivate them to cross the sea to get here - and the reasons they want to visit may surprise American travelers, tourism marketers say.

Understanding the interests and lifestyles of those international travelers is vital to attracting them to the region, says Toby McCarrick, the executive director of Great Lakes North America. His agency promotes seven Great Lakes states as an international travel destination. It's based in Chicago and has offices in Germany and England.

The states "may be competitors domestically, but internationally, they band together to sell themselves as a region," he said. The effort includes Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and is organized under and funded by the Great Lakes Council of Governors.

Travelers in the German-speaking countries of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and the English-speaking countries of the United Kingdom and Ireland are the focus for the campaign. They have both a highly concentrated population and disposable travel income.

"The top markets for us are Japan, the U.K., and Germany, but it's too expensive to market to Japan," Mr. McCarrick said.

European customers, he said, "buy travel very differently than we do. We tend to use [online services like] Expedia and go directly through airlines. They use travel agents. Workers there are required to take their vacations. They get a lot of time and it's mandatory to use it. These are long-haul trips for them. It's a big investment in time and money."

Most international travelers visiting the Great Lakes have several things in common, Mr. McCarrick said. They not only are familiar with the country's top destinations, but have visited them already, and they are particularly interested in American culture.

He calls the international travelers "fly-drive" customers, because they fly into a gateway city like Chicago, Detroit, or Minneapolis, then drive outward to various destinations.

"In general, we're not a first time visit," he said of the region. "Chicago is. And [by the time they come here] they've been to New York, Florida, Vegas, and maybe California."

The Great Lakes states attract "the traveler that's looking for something different. They're looking for that genuine America, the real America. They want to get off the interstate."

Small town life, roadside farm stands, and bicycling tours are of interest to them, more so than the scenery and sandy beaches that bring American visitors to the Great Lakes. He mentioned Mackinac Island as one of Michigan's top attractions for European travelers, along with the birthplaces of American music.

"People in Michigan are surprised" by the sites that are promoted to overseas tourists, Mr. McCarrick said.

"We are such a small blip on the awareness level in the U.K. and Germany. We are competing with every country in the world that has a beach. So we don't talk about that, we talk about Motown in Detroit, Chicago blues, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. They visit Motown and they love it. People in Michigan say, 'You send them there?' Detroit has done an incredible job reinventing itself and its downtown. The other big Michigan attraction - Mackinac Island. Talk about Americana."

Camping, outdoor activities, and winter sports like dogsledding, ice fishing, and snowmobiling are activities promoted to European travelers, he said, but with the ready availability of skiing in the Alps, he doesn't promote U.S. skiing to them.

"The other big thing is the coastline and the Circle Lake Michigan tour. They love driving the coastline and stopping at those well developed harbor towns. Meijer gardens [in Grand Rapids] is big, along with cherries and wine."

Mr. McCarrick is handing out packets of dried cherries for a "taste of the Great Lakes" at his trade show visits overseas this year. He'll go to two shows in Germany and London. Businesses that want to exhibit with him there must pay to participate.

At the shows and through printed brochures and catalogs, he will seek out tour operators and travel agents with his message. This is important in promoting any destination to people in Germany and England because most travelers rely on agents to make arrangements. People there do not make their own reservations by phone or online.

"They're two years behind us in online arrangements, and high speed access at home has not been common there," Mr. McCarrick said. "Also, unlike here, workers do not do personal things on work computers, because they'd be fired. They're very paper-oriented over there, so we use lots of print publications. There's no [paid] advertising, only promotions and public relations."

For example, his agency has teamed up with outdoor clothing stores and conducted magazine contests to raise awareness of Great Lakes travel.

"Anything to get us in front of the public eye," he said.

The agency doesn't pay for expensive research to track travel numbers, he said, and conventional tracking methods would skew the results. That's because many people may fly into Chicago, for example, which has "the most lift of any city in the region" - but it's not their final flight destination. Even though it could be done, tracking the number of passengers into Chicago from his overseas markets would not be very helpful in understanding the regional market, he said.

"I have no idea what percentage of international travelers visit," he said, and he believes there is no valid way to track it.

"I do know the German and U.K. market is growing again, to almost pre-9-11 numbers," Mr. McCarrick said. "And for 2009, I will say that a change in the U.S. political climate is already proving to have a positive effect on travel."

Within the Great Lakes region, individual states have found different strengths in attracting these tourists, he explained.

"Pennsylvania and Minnesota have tax-free shopping, a huge draw," he said. Shopping in general, he added, is a new trend with these groups.

Fourteen- to 21-day trips were once the norm for these long-distance travelers, but now "we're starting to see and promote some shorter shopping trips of about four days," for example, to Mall of America in Minnesota.

In Michigan, beyond the popular destinations of Mackinac Island and Detroit, he pointed out some challenges facing northern areas. For many northern Michigan destinations "upper Wisconsin and upper Michigan are similar, in their minds, to Canada" with its woodsy, outdoor activities. And because of the favorable Canadian exchange rate, he said, this presents another challenge to drawing international travel to the northern parts of the states.

"Michigan's number one traveler is the Michigan resident," Mr. McCarrick said, which he identified as the state's top challenge to tourism in general.

Great Lakes North America's 2009 travel guide features a photograph of Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island on its cover. It can be seen on the Web site (www.greatlakesnorthamerica. co.uk), along with information and photograph galleries of every participating state.