* Liz Ware, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Mission Point Resort, Michigan Travel Commissioner

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And diverre had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean,
and if I had a pool here.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, if you went out on a boat on the
ocean in the Dominican Republic, you were in for the
ride of your life because dozens of cruise ship passengers
were left stranded at sea. Their forty foot catamarans sank
off the coast of the dr The ship was called
the Boca de Uma and it was in Samana Bay

(00:42):
and there was a breach in the hull and a
vessel took on water accorded to the Dominican Navy, and
they have pictures of people swimming in the sea. Can
you imagine that they had fifty five passengers from a
cruise ship and fortunately they all had life vests and
they we're rescued by the navy. But you know, when

(01:02):
you climb on one of those big catamarans, you don't
expect the thing to sink. And there's some suspicion that
it hit something and one of those pontoons had a
hole in it and down went the boat. Now this
is right around here the anniversary of the sinking of
the Edmen Fitzgerald. But you just don't think those kind
of things will happen, and sometimes they do. A place

(01:25):
that is accessible by boat. Hey, you can get there
by airplane too, I suppose, but mainly people go on
the ferries. Is Mackinaw Island where we find Liz where
the vice president of sales and marketing at Mission Point
Resort and a member of the Michigan Travel Commission. And
before we get to her, speaking of boats, the USS

(01:46):
Gerald R. Ford. Now that's an aircraft carrier. In fact,
it's the United States's largest warship is in the Caribbean,
ratcheting up pressure on Venezuela. If we're going to talk
about boats, we can't leave out the USS gerald Ford.
Michigan's presidents and the current president, Donald Trump, has taken

(02:09):
some stick from his own supporters, gave an interview with
Laura Ingram and talked about the H one B visas
during that interview, and you can decide for yourself. Here's
what he said.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
There's never going to be a country like what we
have right now. And does that the Republicans have to
talk about it a lot?

Speaker 4 (02:26):
And does that mean the H one B visa thing
will not be a big priority for your administration? Because
if you want to raise wages for American workers, you
can't flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds
of dolls.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
And we also do have to bring in talent.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
When we're gone to your talent and you know you
don't we don't have talent in me.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Now you don't have you don't have certain talents, and
you have to people have to learn. You can't take
people off an unapploied like an unemployment line and say
I'm going to put you into a factory We're going
to make missiles, or I'm going.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
To put do we ever do it before? Well, you
and I.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
I'll give you an example. In Georgia, they raided because
they wanted illegal immigrants out. They had people from South
Korea that made batteries all their lives. You know, making
batteries are very complicated and it's not an easy thing
and very dangerous, a lot of explosions, a lot of problems.
They had like five or six hundred people early stages

(03:19):
to make batteries and to teach people how to do
it well. They wanted them to get out of the country.
You're going to need that lure. I mean, I know
you and I disagree on this. You can't just say
a country's coming in, going to invest ten billion dollars
to build a plant and going to take people off
an unemployment line who haven't worked in five years, and
they're going to start making their missiles. It doesn't work that.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Way, Liz. Where what is an H one B visa?

Speaker 1 (03:46):
The H one B visas for highly educated positions as
opposed to H two B visas, which is what we
use in the tourism industry here in Michigan, which are
seasonal visas for people to come in and and fill
jobs that most Americans don't want. And I would consider
that to be like housekeeping, dishwashing. So when we look

(04:06):
at H H one visas, there's so much different than
what we're looking at here in northern Michigan, which are
the H two B visas.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
And near as you can tell, is the administration supportive
of the H two B visas that your business and
others in the tourism industry rely on.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
I think that there's confusion sometimes between an H two
B visa worker and immigration and the immigration policies. The
H two B visa workers are people who come for
six months, do a job, pay taxes, and then they
go back to their countries where they live for the
other six months, and so it is not immigration at all.
They're not trying to be American citizens, although there are

(04:48):
pathways if that were to happen. But most people want
to go back home because they are the jobs that
they have here for six months are supporting their families
back at home. For instance, a lot of our h
tow be visas from Jamaica. They have families there, their
roots are there. They come here to work, they save
their money, they buy American products and ship them back
to their families, and then they go home.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
You're an industry leader. And tourism, the Michigan Hospitality and
Tourism Authority is not too keen on a proposalizer to
understand by State Representative John Roth about enacting a three
percent tax on short term rentals. Can you walk us through,
navigate us through, since we're talking in boat language about

(05:33):
this and what it means to vrbos and airbnbs and
tourism in Michigan.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Sure, so, currently right now for term rentals, airbnbs, vbros,
they don't pay any taxes to support local tourism efforts.
On the other hand, hotels do. So hotels pay depending
on the municipality attacks and we call it a bed tax.

(05:58):
So right now mission point, for every we pay three
percent bed tax, which short term rentals do not have
to pay. So this legislation would say three percent is
going to be added to short term rentals, but it
would also be added to the hotels, which isn't There's
no parity there, so it adds an additional tax to hotels.

(06:19):
Those moneies right now for hotel taxes go back to
the support the local economy. The three percent that would
go from short term rentals, it's not dedicated to do that,
it can go anywhere. What we would say is you
take that in half and half of it goes back
to the municipality to support local tourism efforts, and the

(06:42):
other half of that would go to support the Pure
Michigan campaign. So the money's collected from tourism are going
back to support this industry, and we know how important
those dollars are. And with Pure Michigan, for every one
dollar invested in the Pure Michigan campaign, there's a tax
return to the state of eleven dollars and that is

(07:02):
a great investment.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
So Representative Roth is in the right frame of mind.
You just don't like the forum at the moment. It
needs more work. Back to the drawing table.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yes, and I think that there is an opportunity for
open dialogue for everyone to understand the situation. And I'm
pleased that that is happening and.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Pure Michigan funding maybe will be restored. We shall see.
Kelly Wolgemott, who heads up Pure Michigan Travel Michigan, would
remind you that Michigan's tourism industry contributed a total of
fifty four point eight billion dollars in economic impact of
the economy. In twenty twenty four, they did a study

(07:45):
and release that study at Travel Michigan. One hundred and
thirty one point two million visitors traveled to Michigan, spending
thirty point seven billion in destinations across the state. That
was up four point nine percent from the year before.
And the Pure Michigan campaign is what we can attribute

(08:07):
to a lot of the people who have that kind
of awareness inside our state and out of it. So
that is a conversation that will continue, and it will
continue among the business leaders from Michigan. They're united by
an ambitious goal to make Michigan a top ten state
for jobs, talent, and a thriving economy. They say innovation

(08:28):
has always been central to Michigan's story, and there's lots
of innovation in the tourism industry these days. By demands,
Blue Cross has Michigan covered head to toe, inside and out,
ready to help with health and wellness resources for the
body and mind, and you can learn more at BCBSM
dot com. You can read my travel writing every other

(08:50):
Sunday and the Lansing State Journal print edition and at
LSJ dot com. Go World Travel dot com is another
place that you can read me and Traveltattler dot org
and my latest book, Travel Tatler Less Than tour Red Tales,
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