Dann Lewis "A Very Good Year"

Tourism spending rose in 2005, state reports

Overnight travelers spent $3.1 billion last year, ending a four-year slump.

"It means we're not only riding the wave, but we're being more successful than others." Charles Colgan Associate director, Maine's new Center for Tourism Research and Outreach

Maine's tourism industry broke out of a four year slump in 2005 and increased the total number of overnight trips to the state by 9 percent and the number of overnight vacationers by 12 percent, figures being released today show. Taken together, overnight travelers made 9.7 million trips and spent 15 percent more last year than in 2004, leaving behind $3.1 billion spent on meals, lodging, purchases and services.

The state tourism office credited better marketing and promotion, good summer weather and rising gasoline prices that kept motorists closer to home for the exceptionally strong showing. "2005 was a very good year," said Dann Lewis, the state's tourism director. "It reversed a trend that had been soft for four years in the aftermath of 9-11."

The data are part of an extensive report prepared annually for Maine's tourism office by Longwoods International, a Canadain travel research firm. Maine's tourism industry is the largest single contributor to Maine's economy. Tourism generated $13.6 billion in sales and provided 176,600 jobs in 2004, according to data gathered by Longwoods and the tourism office.

Despit that, Maine and New England in general have struggled to attract more visitors over the past four years. Competition from other destinations, the legacy of the 2001 terrorist attacks and othe factors have been blamed for the slump.

Maine responded by hiring a New York City advertising agency that revamped the tourism marketing campaign and redesigned the state's Web site. Both actions had come under fire by critics who questioned specific elements of these efforts, but the 2005 results suggest those changes are making a difference.

That's one conclusion that can be drawn for the 12 percent jump in overnight trips that Longwoods International defines as "marketable." These trips reflect discretionary vacation travel, not visits to friends and relatives. In the tourism industry, marketable trips are of special interest because they can be influenced by advertising and promotion.

"These are people who made a choice to come to Maine," said Charles Colgan, associate director of Maine's new Center for Tourism Research and Outreach at the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine. By comparison, overnight vacation trips grew nationally by only 2 percent, Colgan noted.

At the same time, Maine's share of trips by Northeast residents grew by 14 percent. Massachusetts saw a 10 percent rise, and the other New England states had little or no growth. That's also an important indicator. Maine competes with the other New England states for visitors, and the largest share of Maine tourists come from Massachusetts, New York and other Northeast states.

"It means we're not only riding the wave," Colgan said, "but we're being more successful than the others."

Dann Lewis and Charles Colgan agree that the strong performance in 2005 raises expectations for 2006. "I wouldn't expect another 14 percent in market share," Dann Lewis said, "but we're hoping for a reasonable showing in 2006."

from: Portland Press Herald - August 17, 2006 by Tux Turkel

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