Billings hopes to lure more motorcycle riders

BILLINGS – Thousands of motorcycle riders zoom past Billings each summer on Interstate 90, and now city officials are trying to figure out ways to entice some of them into town for a few days.

“We sit right in the middle of motorcycle heaven,” said Michael J. Marsh, who organizes motorcycle rallies. “Billings really is the trailhead.”

The University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research recently estimated that 10 percent of the 10 million people who visit Montana each year arrive on motorcycles. Many of those visitors go through Billings on their way to such places as Yellowstone National Park, the Beartooth Highway and Little Bighorn Battlefield.

Billings also sits between Yellowstone and Sturgis, S.D., site of a motorcycle rally that attracts nearly 500,000 people each summer.

Marsh said Billings should be doing more to get some of them to take the exit ramp and head into Billings.

One of the ways he’s trying to do that is making Billings an annual stop on the American Motorcycle Association Grand National motorcycle race schedule. He estimates that could draw 5,000 people.

“At a revenue rate of $250 per person, per night, the total revenue to be gained by local businesses is at least $625,000 to $750,000,” Marsh said. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”