Dann Lewis Honored by Top Industry Group

Dann H. Lewis, director of the office of tourism, has been selected as one of the most extraordinary sales and marketing minds in hospitality, travel and tourism by senior executives in those industries from around the world.

Dann Lewis, who has served as tourism director in Maine since 1995, was named in January to the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International "Hot List of Top 25 for 2005." Lewis and the 24 others were selected because of their ability to develop marketing strategies that are truly innovative and clever and that get results. In asking for their picks, senior executives from around the globe were told to submit nominees who best exemplified the set criteria: Whose marketing strategies are truly innovative and clever? Whose companies represent a sales-focused organization? Who gets results? Whose work do you wish were your own?

Submitted nominations were reviewed and scored the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association Internationals executive committee, resulting in the third annual "Top 25" list.

Dann Lewis has been tourism director for such notable destinations as the Bahamas, the U. S. Virgin Islands, New York (where he originated the famous "I Love New York" marketing campaign) and most recently, the State of Maine.

Congratulations to Dann Lewis!

From: Hospitality Net Industy News - January 2006

Dann Lewis - Maine's Top Tourist

The man who now runs the state's tourism office does not pull any punches - but he's getting results.

Nothing annoys Dann Lewis more than the phone calls he gets around Labor Day each year from television and newspaper reporters asking how the tourism season went. The Season, he delights in telling them, hasn't gone anywhere. "The assumption that it's over is crazy'" declares Lewis, director of the Maine Office of Tourism.

The Labor day deadline is a prime example of Old Tourism. Dann Lewis is New Tourism, and he is bound and determined to shake up traditional ideas and attitudes toward the industry that in 1997 had a $5.4-billion impact on Maine. The blunt-spoken Dann Lewis came to the Maine tourism shop in 1995 after a career that included building a resort in the Bahamas, running serveral regional airlines in the Caribbean, serving as chief of tourism in the U. S. Virgin Islands and directing the famous "I Love New York" campaign. In other words, he's a pro, and he doesn't hesitate to rain on the parade of tourist-trade optimism that has largely characterized the business in Maine for most of this century.

Dann Lewis says thing out loud that most Vacationland booster wouldn't whisper in their sleep. Maine has actually been losing ground in the vacation sector for years and probably decades, Lewis says. The industry in Maine has been marked by complacency both public and private. Business owners have by and large been reluctant to reinvest in their businesses, to the point where Dann Lewis says there are motels in Maine's premier tourist towns that he wouldn't check his dog into. With candor like this, it's hard to believe that Lewis is a state government employee - and one who seems to be succeeding.

Not that Maine tourist businesses have gotten a lot of support from the state in the past. Dann Lewis saves some of his most stinging criticism for state government's past leadership, or lack of it, in promoting tourism. "It really was not done on a very consistent or professional basis up until just a few years ago," Lewis says. "There was no plan, no overall vision, and very little funding. Maine consistently ranked nearly dead-last for promotional activity."

It would be easy to dismiss Dann Lewis's comments as self-serving if they weren't so undeniable. The King administration first approached Lewis about comint to Maine shortly after the 1994 gubernatorial election. He turned down the offer only to accept it a few months later after learning that the Office of Tourism job would not be business as usual. With King's support, Dann Lewis says the legislature tripled his budget to $4.5 million - and generated four and five times that investment in new tax revenues from additional tourism. For the first time, the office has set up a professionally managed research-based marketing program with one of the major tourism research firms in North America, Longwoods International. Longwoods has made some surprising discoveries about Maine.

"People in Maine tend to think everyone knows about Maine, and that just is not the case," Dann Lewis says. "If you compare the perceptions of people who have been to Maine and those who have not, and the differences are night and day. Perceptions of those that have never visited are in some cases really bizarre. They think Maine is very cold, very remote, on the Arctic Circle, with nothing to do, and nothing of historical or cultural interest."

Dann Lewis has also learned -and can show- that tourism contributes more than $300 million in taxes to the state's coffers and support the equivalent of 101,000 full-time jobs.

But he also has figures that show "Maine has been steadily losing market share," Lewis disclosed. "If tourism goes up 10 percent in the Northeast and only 3 percent in Maine, we're losing ground." The research indicates that the state has failed to keep up with its neighbors since at least 1994, "although we figure the decline goes back decades," Lewis notes.

If Dann Lewis has done nothing else, he has shown that it pays to market Maine, with a return on investment renging up to eleven dollars back for every dollar spent on tourism promotion. "Before he arrived, there hadn't been a good professional report done by an experienced independent market research firm that difinitively showed those kinds of returns," notes Bob Smith, whose Northeast Hospitality, Inc. bought the old Sebasco Harbor Resort in Phippsburg two years ago. "Once people saw that first report, they were amazed."

With many of Maine's bedrock industries, such as forest products steadily losing ground, Dann Lewis seems to be positioning tourism to pick up some of the slack and move up to the top of Maine's economic ladder.

Given the new candor and new professionalism in Maine tourism, just how successful do Mainers want Dann Lewis to be? Is there such a thing as saturation, too many tourists? How does the state protect the Maine that vacationers come here to see?

Dann Lewis believes that the key to handling more tourists lies in expanding the season rather than expanding facilities. He also has a vision of luring more visitors into interior and northern Maine. "One of our goals is to steer tourism into areas that need economic development." he explaines. In recent years, tourism growth rates have actually increased in interior Maine, although not always without complaints from coastal communities. "In Bar Harbor where business is flat, the people there wanted me to burn in effigy for promoting inland Maine."

Dann Lewis appreciates the issues that rising visitor numbers bring, but he expresses confidence that Maine can handle them. "Frankly, we don't have the infrastructure to allow all those people to come to Maine," Lewis points out, referring to everything from limited highway capacity to limited arrivals by air.

"Dann has really done a wonderful job with bringing Maine up to speed in the tourism business," notes Sebasco Harbor Resort's Bob Smith. "We're making progress and that has helped." In the end, Lewis's willingness to tell the tough truth may be the best thing that has happened to Maine since Mr. Moody built his diner.

from: Down East Magazine - April 1999 by Jeff Clark

Dann Lewis - Aiming for the Top

Goal: To make tourism Maine's leading industry

Augusta - Maine's director of tourism, Dann H. Lewis has left a string of success stories in his wake over the years, but now he faces another challenge - making tourism the number-one industry in the state within five years.

Dann Lewis was appointed to head up the state's tourism office by Governor Angus King, who has made no secret of his desire to promote tourism in Maine.

"It's a major element in the economic strategy for the state, " Dann Lewis said in a recent interview. "When I arrived the governor asked me to to prepare a five-year strategy for tourism. One of the major problems, I think, with tourism promotion and development in the past here in Maine is that there's been no consistent effort. There's never been a blueprint around which the industry could rally."

It's hoped the five-year strategy will remedy that. Dann Lewis said "The bottom line is to see tourism grow geographically, on a year-round basis" - and through tax revenue and job creation, "generally increase it's contribution to the ecomony."

Dann Lewis grew up in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire, where he attended Dartmouth College and majored in English literature and mechanical engineering. "After school I went down to the Bahamas and built and operated a small resort, and later wound up as director of marketing for the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism," Lewis said.

From the Bahamas, Dann Lewis went to the U. S. Virgin Islands where he became director of tourism and oversaw double-digit increases in visitor arrivals. Tha job led him to director of tourism for New York state. After leaving New York, Dann Lewis worked as president of several regional airlines from the West Coast to the Northeast. Though he's not a commercial pilot, he piloted seaplanes in the Caribbean islands.

The husband of a respected airline consultant and father of two, now resides in South China, Maine.

Dann Lewis said some areas of Maine, particularly the coastline already enjoy status as successful tourist markets. The new challenge is to market the Eastern and inland areas to visitors, and to stretch the season beyond just the summer months.

Similar efforts have paid off in other states, most notably in New York in the late 1970's when Lewis oversaw the creation of the heart-stopping "I Love New York" campaign. Before the campaign was implemented and promoted on the world stage, there were many areas of upstate New York that did not enjoy a flourishing tourism base and were very much like inland areas of Maine today. Dann Lewis went on to say" I Love New York changed all that, and the prospects here are just as good."

The most recent economic impact studies done in Maine show tourism account for more than 75,000 jobs and roughly $2.75 billion in expenditures, so its importance to the state cannot be understated, Lewis said.

"I would hazard a guess that at the end of the five-year strategy, you'll probably see tourism as the number-one industry in the state," Dann Lewis said.

by: Jonathan Humphrey

How To Keep 'Em Coming - The Dann Lewis Plan

Dann Lewis didn't ease into his new job as director of the Maine Office of Tourism. On his first day, Governor Angus King asked him to figure out how to maximize the value of tourism for Maine. King wanted a written long-term strategy, something the state tourism office had never had before. And he wanted it in three months.

Dann Lewis met his mid-October deadline. He marshalled the advice of business people statewide and crafted a five-year strategy that is likely to drive future discussions of tourism in Maine for years to come.

Dann Lewis's goal in the plan is to boost tourism expenditures in Maine, last officially estimated at $2.75 billion, by 15 percent by the year 2000. Among other things, the strategy calls for making tourism a year-round industry in Maine.

"It's an ambitious major program" said Dann Lewis, most recently an executive at several airline companies. But, Lewis said, "you've got to have a plan to know where you're going."

Dann Lewis admitted that the buggest hurdle over the long-term is likely to be securing adequate funding to further promote and develop tourism. The strategy repeats familiar refrains from past tourism studies, like enticing more tourists to venture inland and into northern Maine and extending the tourism season into traditionally slow months like November and December.

The Dann Lewis strategy has some new twists - ideas that could help Maine market itself without having to dig deeply into state coffers:

• The strategy puts more emphasis on the emerging trend of regional promotion in tourism. The state would continue to project an overall image of Maine. Beneath that marketing umbrella, different regions would market specific activities and packages, and develop a tourism infrastructure in their specific areas.



• The strategy also suggests the state team more often with private businesses, like airlines, car rental companies and tour operators, for more bang for the cooperative dollar. "Virtually everybody in the business should be looking for cooperative dollars to augment their marketing efforts," Dann Lewis said.
  

This is familiar turf for Dann Lewis. He worked on the early stages of the blockbuster "I Love New York" campaign earlier in his career. That, he said, was highly leveraged with private funds from domestic and international airlines, companies like Coca Cola and the Broadway theatre owners guild.

Dann Lewis acknowledges that Maine "won't get that type of scale as New York State, but there are similar opportunities on a smaller scale."

The point is, Lewis said, "we now have a long term plan, and with tourism a proven economic development engine, it doesn't make a lot of sense to ignore it.

"From: The Portland Press Herald, November 1995

Dann Lewis - From Tourist to Tourism Director

Dann H. Lewis has seen Maine through a tourist's eyes. He has flown into the Portland Jetport, dined on Maine lobster, visited friends along the coast and canoed through Western Maine on the Ossipee River.

Now, the Dallas airline executive will travel to Augusta. But this time, he's staying. Dann Lewis begins a job on Monday as the director of the Maine Office of Tourism, the top government position in one of the state's largest industries.

Lewis will oversee an office with an annual budget of $1.8 million and a four-person staff. His primary mission will be to market Maine as a tourism destination. Industry observers say Dann Lewis' most challenging tasks will be to promote the state despite tight budget constraints and to unite diverse interests within the tourism industry behind those efforts.

Lewis said in a telephone interview that one of his primary goals will be to "get the government side and the private-sector side to work more harmoniously. That's that I've found is very necessary and very beneficial in the other regions I've worked in."

Dann Lewis has worked in many other regions during the 36-year course of his career. He's headed tourism efforts for some big-name destination spots: the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and New York State where he was in on the early stages of the "I Love New York" campaign.

Bern Rotman, director of communications for the New York State Department of Economic Development, said Lewis "had a pivotal role to play" in generating tourism industry support for the "I Love New York" campaign.

"Dann's role was extremely important at a time when we started the advertising in a very big way," Rotman said.

Lewis will have a lot less money to work with in Maine, where the tourism budget is only one-sixth the size of New York's. But Lewis has shown himself to be creative in using scarce resources, Rotman said. One way he has done that, Rotman said, is by seeking public-private partnerships - a common theme of Governor Angus King's administration.

Dann Lewis has spent nearly all his adult life in the travel industry. Immediately after graduating from Dartmouth College he went to the Bahamas and built a resort. "I did everything from drawing the plans to laying the blocks to doing the electrical wiring," he said.

Lewis subsequently ran his own tourism related development company, worked for years in the public sector for tourism offices and did consulting for clients such as Six Flags Corporation, a big amusement park operator. He's spent the last decade working for small airline companies, two of which he helped restructure following bankruptcy proceedings.

Job's a nice fit

Lewis says the job of tourism director in Maine dovetails with both his personal and professional interests. For one thing, he said, he and his wife have been wanting to return to New England for the past three years. They own a summer home in Freedom, N. H. on the Maine-New Hampshire border. They have friends in Maine. And Lewis grew up in Massachusetts.

Professionally too, the job seemed to be a good fit. Lewis said he decided to apply while visiting friends in York earlier this year. While there, he read a newspaper article describing King's belief in the importance of tourism to the Maine economy. It struck a chord.

Lewis became one of 13 applicants - and one of only two out-of-staters - interested in the tourism job. His appointment was announced in late June.

Lewis was chosen because of his broad experience and the administration's sense that he would "be good at teamwork," said Tom McBrierty, commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development and Lewis's boss.

The announcement has been greeted with relief, and curiosity, by Maine's tourism industry. The relief comes from the fact that the post has finally been filled after a vacancy of three months. The curiosity stems from the fact that few in Maine's tourism industry know Lewis or have even met him.

One exception is Karen Peterson, president of a York based marketing research firm, Davidson-Peterson Associates. She and Lewis have been friends for over 20 years. Also, his resume includes a five year stint as senior marketing consultant and West Coast director of her firm.

Peterson calls Lewis a "very gentle and quietly intelligent person, with a commanding knowledge of what makes tourism the world's largest industry". "What we need most in this industry in Maine is consensus-building" said Peterson. "He doesn't bring any baggage. He's not on one side or the other."

From: Portland Press Herals/Maine Sunday Telegram - July 1995 by Kim Strosnider

Dann Lewis Receives "Outstanding New Yorker" Award

New York - Dann H. Lewis, New York State deputy commissioner and director of tourism development, recently received the "Outstanding New Yorker" award from the New York City Junior Chamber of Commerce for his important contributions in the marketing and promotion of both New York City and State.

The occasion was celebrated at the Junior Chamber's third annual Big Apple Banquet, which was held at the elegant Park Lane Hotel.

Praise and honors are no strangers to Dann Lewis, who came to his demanding deputy commissioner's position in the New York State Department of Commerce from the directorship of the U. S. Virgin Islands department of tourism, and the marketing director's post with the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. In his latter capacity he helped establish Bahamasair, the national airline of the Bahamas, of which he subsequently became the first chairman. With this impressive background Dann Lewis was eminently qualified for the difficult task of bringing to the attention of business travelers and tourists the facilities, sights and cultural treasures of New York City and New York State. His expertise was translated into the remarkable success of the state's "I Love New York" promotion campaign on one hand - which he coordinated - and the vastly increased awareness throughout New York of the importance of meetings, conventions and incentive groups to the Empire State's economy, and morale on the other - an awareness which Dann Lewis fostered.

For all these reasons, Meeting and Conventions congratulates Dann Lewis.

From: Meetings and Conventions Magazine - May, 1980 - by Mel Hosanski

Thousands of Visitors Love New York

The "I Love New York" campaign has brought many thousands of new visitors, which means more tax revenues to New York State -- but individual municipalities and attractions will have to do their own work to draw those tourists through the turnstiles, Dann H. Lewis said yesterday.

Dann Lewis is justifiably proud of the campaign's record because he originated it as deputy commissioner of New York State's Division of Tourism. He spoke yesterday at the Rochester County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Lewis went on to say, "I would warn you that the success of the program does not mean that individual resorts and attractions should automatically expect to see more business coming in with little effort on their part. Individual attractions must continue to advertise."

But the potential is there if they do, Dann Lewis believes. His speech cited figure after figure to show the research the division did before starting the "I Love New York" campaign and the results it has had. Among the figures Lewis cited:

* The travel industry employs 200,000 full-time in New York state and brings $6 billion per year in sales. It's the No. 2 industry in New York. But before 1977 there had been a steady decline in the tourism budget and in New York's market share in the Northeast.

* Research showed that outside New York City the "promotable" attractions were clearly outdoors - the lakes and mountains and unequalled scenic beauty of the state.

* New York ranked low - at 8 percent - a few years ago for "top of mind" awareness of the state. That figure has more than tripled and is growing monthly. "Even better," Dann Lewis added, "all of this can be traced to their awareness of our advertising. Without the ads, there would have been no change at all."

* In 1977, the first year the ads concentrated on upstate, the number of overall trips by tourists to the Northeastern states remained about the same as the previous year -- stagnant -- but trips to New York state increased by 24 percent. The big loser was the New England states.

Lewis figured there were over 1,850,000 individual trips to New York, conservatively estimating that the trips brought in $200 million in income and $14 million in taxes.

Dann Lewis said during the first 18 months of the campaign $10.9 million was spent for advertising and other forms of marketing. "That's about a 6 to 1 ratio of tax dollars generated to advertising expense, a ratio I'm sure we can all live with."

Apart from its dollar effect the campaign brought in 11 major awards, including a special Tony award. "We started out with an effective idea and it just snowballed all over the world," Lewis said. "New Yorkers all over the state have a renewed sense of pride -- we see people wearing the I Love New York buttons and putting bumper stickers on their cars. Even New York City Taxi Drivers are saying "come visit again soon" as they drop people off at the state's metropolitan airports.

From: Rochester News, by Anne Tanner, Financial Editor

Dann H. Lewis - "Broadway Loves New York"

It was raining. But this was a big night for the New York Division of Tourism and an even bigger night for Broadway. You had major big stars shooting for union scale wages. You had chorus lines waiving residuals. You had Peter Pan's Sandy Duncan being hoisted into the darkening night-lit sky. You also had Captain Hook, Nana-the-dog, Wendy Dear and the Darling Boys. Last but hardly least, you had the folks from Wells, Rich, Greene Advertising and Dann Lewis, the tweed-jacketed Director of the Division of Tourism (who was paying for this shebang).

There was a lot riding on this thing. The League of New York Theatres and Producers calculate that the "I Love New York" commercials have sold a cool 1.8 million theatre tickets, and the Department of Commerce figures a booming 126 million in revenue has been brought into this state since the campaign began. New York needs that revenue after the huge slump of '75.

So the rain was being ignored.

Sandy Duncan Loves New York.

And Lucie Arnaz Loves New York

And Angela Landsbury Loves New York

And Oh Yes, Beverly Sills, who will kick off this Broadway-packed, 60 second commercial when it hits the air on November 17th, Loves New York.

On this campaign alone, five shows are being covered: Sweeney Todd was shot was shot down by South Street Seaport, Dancin was shot on the steps of the Plaza Fountain, They're Playing Our Song was filmed on a flatbed truck in the middle of Times Square, Evita was shot on the steps of the New York Public Library and of course Peter Pan. Everyone belting out "I Love New York" at the top of their lungs.

Suddenly Steve Horn (the best cameraman-director in the business) says "God, the Twin Towers are getting covered with fog." The Twin Towers are lit up. So, for that matter, is the entire east side of lower Manhattan. A woman from the Division of Tourism saw to that. She called the Building Owners and Maintenance Association and asked if they'd leave the lights on in their east side offices to form the background for the new "I Love New York" commercial. They said "sure".

In a funny litttle gesture of excitement Sandy Duncan crosses her arms in front of her chest, flings them wide again and as she is hoisted high above the Brooklyn Bridge says "There's something in the air!" She throws back her head and laughs the enchanted laugh of a little boy who will never grow up, and we are all, for a split second, young again.

It's a wrap and Dann Lewis is beaming.

From: Playbill - September 1979

Dann Lewis Airlifts I Love New York to Japan

Dann Lewis announced a joint advertising program to encourage more Japanese travel to New York State has been worked out between Japan Air Lines and the New York State Division of Tourism.

"JAL print advertising in Japan will carry the I LOVE NEW YORK logo during October, November and December," said Dann Lewis, "with special television commercials that were filmed in New York airing during this period, as well as in the Spring of 1980, in Japan."

In addition, radio commercials will feature the I LOVE NEW YORK theme music, already known worldwide.

Dann Lewis went on to note, "a special I LOVE NEW YORK desk has been placed in the main ticket office of JAL in Tokyo, T-shirts, maps, buttons and other collateral materials are available in response to coupons in local ads." JAL reports that Japanese tourists are already eager to visit New York, particularly the upstate region.

from - Discover America News - January 1980