Tourism officials in the Iowa Great Lakes estimate over 720-thousand people visited the area this summer, slighly behind last year’s tally. Kiley Zankowski is executive director of Vacation Okoboji, which is part of the Iowa Great Lakes Chamber of Commerce.
As expected, the 4th of July weekend was the busiest weekend of the summer, with an estimated 90-thousand visitors.
The seven natural lakes that make up the Iowa Great Lakes cover about 13-thousand acres and have about 70 miles of shoreline. About six-thousand boats are registered in the county and there are about 450 hotels, resorts and other properties that offer lodging to out-of-town visitors. Zankowski says most visitors from an area that includes Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Omaha, Des Moines, and Minneapolis, but an increasing number of visitors are coming from as far away as Chicago, Kansas City, and Wisconsin.
