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Survey: Michigan Businesses Split Over Casino Issue

DETROIT, Michigan – (PRESS RELEASE) -- Michigan's business community is split on whether the state should spend money to promote its 20 casinos in state- sponsored tourism promotion.

Forty-nine percent of Crain's subscribers surveyed about tourism issues believe casinos should not be included in state-sponsored advertising, while 48 percent thought they should. Three-quarters of those surveyed were opposed to adding to the state's 17 tribal casinos and three commercially owned Detroit casinos.

The survey was completed by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA for Crain's Detroit Business and the law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP. EPIC-MRA conducted the survey polling 500 randomly selected management level Crain's subscribers throughout Michigan the last week of June. Results carry a margin of error of 4.4 percent.

Nelson Westrin, partner in the gaming and hospitality practice group of Honigman Miller, said the survey results show sentiment in Michigan toward casinos remains conservative, yet they also show businesspeople recognize casinos as part of the entertainment Michigan has to offer visitors.

"The bottom line," added Crain's Publisher Mary Kramer, "is our readers are about evenly split on whether casinos should be promoted, but a huge majority do not favor adding more casinos -- Indian-owned or not. Almost half seemed to be saying: 'Casinos are here to stay; why not make the most of them and promote them for tourism?'"

The completion of permanent casino hotels in Detroit was ranked as the top new attraction expected to boost tourism in the metropolitan Detroit area. Outstate, casinos also are viewed as a critical link to tourism and economic development, Westrin said.

Assuming all amenities were the same, survey respondents preferred state- licensed commercial casinos over tribal-owned casinos, but 38 percent were undecided and 38 percent reported that they do not visit casinos.

In its official editorial opinion in the same edition, Crain's suggested that the tribes should consider a voluntary pool of funds to promote tourism in Michigan during this bad economic time. Originally, Indian tribes paid the state 8 percent of slot machine revenue under "compacts" with the state. Today, the tribes say they owe the state nothing because Detroit's casinos and the state lottery's own keno game violate the "exclusivity" clauses in the compacts. With nearly $1 billion a year collectively in revenue, they can probably afford it, Crain's concluded.

Other findings in the survey included the following: 93 percent of respondents would recommend Michigan as a travel destination and 50 percent would recommend Southeast Michigan. The top two travel destinations in Michigan were Mackinac Island and Traverse City. In Detroit and Southeast Michigan the top two spots were Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford museum.

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