Maine to spend $230,000 to attract summer tourists

Maine’s tourism chief came to Bangor Friday to announce the state’s plans for promoting the upcoming summer tourist season.

Hilary N. Sinclair, deputy commissioner for tourism, said that her office would spend $230,000 to market Maine to potential summertime visitors.

“That’s the second-highest allocation ever set aside for summer promotions, and $100,000 more than we spent for last year’s campaign,” Sinclair said. The record for promotion of the summer season was set in 1988, when the state spent a little more than $300,000.

Sinclair said that her office could spend the additional money, in spite of the state’s budget shortfall, because funds had been diverted from some research projects and some focused-marketing projects.

The tourism office also has planned a special promotion to encourage Canadians to visit Maine during Victoria Day holiday, May 19-21. Advertisements will encourage the Canadians to travel to Maine for shopping and sightseeing during the long weekend, which commemorates the birth of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria.

“Maine’s malls and merchant associations also will be combining their promotional efforts with this special tourism program to turn Victoria Day Weekend into a shopping bonanza for our Canadian neighbors,” Sinclair said.

Advertisements and stories regarding Victoria Day will appear in publications in Saint John, Halifax, Fredericton, Sherbrooke and Montreal.

Sinclair said that the Canadian promotion would “be a good way to get summer going,” because the weekend falls a week before Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start to the summer season.

Another initiative announced by Sinclair involves a special, 16-page pull-out supplement on Maine that will appear in the June issue of New England Monthly Magazine. The supplement will include advertisements and editorial copy.

“We’re excited about the special section,” Sinclair said. “In addition to reaching the 120,000 readers of the magazine, the office will receive reprints which we will distribute at trade shows in the United States and abroad.”

Initially, she said, the state would obtain 20,000 copies of the supplement. Additional copies can be purchased if they are needed.

The regular summer promotion effort will feature advertisements in the Boston Globe Magazine, the Hartford Courant’s Sunday Magazine, and the Providence Journal Bulletin’s Sunday Magazine.

The Office of Tourism also will advertise Maine in publications such as Yankee, People and New England Monthly.

“Those magazines have a combined circulation of almost 2 million readers,” Sinclair said, “and reach the very audience to which we hope to appeal.”

Sluggishness in the Northeastern economy also could favor a good summer season for Maine’s tourist-related businesses, because vacationers historically have tended to stay closer to home during years when there was uncertainty about the economy.

“There are indications Northeasterners and Canadians will be looking less toward Europe and other distant locations this summer,” Sinclair said. “We want them to consider Maine instead.”

Sinclair said that the decision to increase the summer promotion budget came after industry representatives had asked for more advertising. Some sectors of the industry, especially along the southern coast of the state, complained that 1989 wasn’t a good year.

During much of the 1980s, tourism grew between 10 and 12 percent a year in the state. Last year, lodging receipts increased 7 percent and restaurant receipts increased about 4 percent.

Sinclair is optimistic that the 1990 season will be a good one. But she reminded her audience that the success of the summer would hinge on the weather, the mosquito crop and concern about Lyme disease.