Dreary weather on Monday left some in the tourism business with a dreary outlook on the coming season.

Memorial Day is considered the unofficial debut of Maine’s role as vacationland, but some in the business are hoping the weekend showing is not an omen for what follows.

Tom Gutow, owner of the Castine Inn, was blunt. “It is actually pretty poor. May has been abysmal, the worst May we’ve seen,” he said.

Gutow and his wife have owned and operated the inn for 14 years. Since the inn is not a destination for weeklong vacations, business is tied to the weather.

“People don’t wander up the coast of Maine from Portland or Boston” when it’s raining, he said. “Advance reservations don’t look that good, either.”

Gutow believes tourism trends are changing, with would-be travelers waiting until just days before taking a trip to check weather forecasts and then make reservations. They also comparison shop online, which makes it hard to raise room rates.

Middle-class New Englanders who for years visited Maine are realizing they can afford to fly to Florida and board a four-night cruise for about the same price as a week in Maine, Gutow said.

Donna Lorrain of the Boothbay Harbor Inn echoed Gutow’s observations about poor occupancy rates so far this season.

“It’s down, especially groups, like bus tours,” she said. “I blame it on the weather – and the forecast.”

Friday was a decent day in Boothbay, she said, though the Weather Channel reported it as a washout.

Lorrain said warmer and sunnier weather in Boston and New York will drive people to Maine. Advance reservations for the summer months are “about the same as last year,” she said.

But that’s not necessarily good news, since the 2004 summer season was one of the worst in recent memory for Maine lodging businesses.

“There’s still hope,” she said. “There’s always hope.”

Jack Willson, owner of the South Bay Campground in Lubec, an oceanfront property featuring 74 sites on Cobscook Bay, was also glum.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said, with reservations down by 50 percent from last year. And last year’s business was down 40 percent from 2003.

Willson established the campground in 1999 and experienced a decent season in 2002, which he attributes in part to a positive review in Outdoors magazine.

On Mount Desert Island, with the international draw of Acadia National Park, early summer bookings were looking strong at Bayview, a hotel and town house lodging business in Bar Harbor, but May and the holiday weekend were a washout, said Allie Nolan,

Away from the coast, weather seemed to be less of a factor for advance reservations.

Ruth McLaughlin, owner of the Blair Hill Inn in Greenville, a bed-and-breakfast and restaurant, said bookings for the summer seemed to be steady.

“It’s tracking with where we were the last two years. We were actually up last year,” she said. That bucked the statewide trend, perhaps because the inn had just begun to be listed in guide publications.

Though Greenville is just a 90-minute drive from Bangor, McLaughlin and other Moosehead Lake area innkeepers find that out-of-staters think the trek inland is longer than it actually is.

That perception seems to spur travelers to plan in advance, which cushions businesses such as the Blair Hill Inn from the effects of bad weather, she said.

“I don’t get impulse visitors. I anticipate that may continue,” McLaughlin said.

Nancy Norris, who owns The Pines on Sysladobsis Lake near Lee, east of Lincoln, said her business is also somewhat weatherproof. The sporting camp features cabins and a lodge, catering to fishermen and those who enjoy the peace and quiet of the woods.

“The spring has started out fairly slow, but the summer looks the same [as other years],” Norris said. Many of her guests are returning visitors who book a year in advance.

“We’re not on the beaten path. You have to plan to get here,” she said.

And the rain doesn’t necessarily ruin a stay.

“Real, die-hard fishermen don’t care if there’s black flies, mosquitoes, rain, whatever,” Norris said.

When the rain beats down at the Bingham headquarters of North Country Rivers, a rafting outfit that offers trips on the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers, Rachel Smith knows the phone won’t ring.

‘”Weather makes a huge difference,” she said, adding the thought of white-water rafting does not appeal to people when it’s cold and wet outside.

Reservations are coming in, “but it’s more spread out,” she said, with bookings already into September.