ORONO – After nearly three years in the making, the University of Maine System’s new Maine Center for Tourism Research and Outreach, known as CenTRO and long considered an important aid to Maine’s tourism industry, is open for business.

CenTRO director Harold Daniel, associate professor of marketing in the Maine School of Business in Orono, and Associate Director Charlie Colgan, professor of public policy and management in the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine, have announced the launching of the CenTRO Web site, www.umaine.edu/centro.

The site is an informational resource for the public, the Maine Legislature, state policy-makers and the thousands of businesses that depend on tourism. It is the beginning of an effort Colgan believes will help make the tourism industry a much more competitive and vital part of the state’s economy.

“It’s an idea that’s been kicking around for nigh onto 30 years,” Colgan said, a former state economist. “It’s good to see it finally come to pass.”

CenTRO is the focal point for coordinating research, outreach and educational programs related to recreation and tourism within the state. With resources from all of the University of Maine System campuses, CenTRO will serve the research and information needs of the tourism industry, and help state and local officials work together to further develop tourism resources.

The Maine tourism advisory committee, comprising industry and government representatives, will serve as the advisory board for CenTRO. Kimberly Junkins, formerly with the Department of Resource Economics and Policy at UMaine, is the administrative assistant and contact person for CenTRO.

The Web site provides industry information, news, resources, and university research and market studies on tourism in Maine. Administratively, CenTRO is housed in the Maine Business School in the D.P. Corbett Business Building on the Orono campus, but relies on research and cooperation from all seven University of Maine campuses.

Tourism in Maine generates more than 176,000 jobs, $3.8 billion in wages, $531 million in tax revenue and $13.6 billion in sales of goods and services, making it one of Maine’s largest industries. In spite of those figures, tourism remains comparatively an unmeasured and under appreciated industry, given its diverse nature and demographics, according to Daniel, and Thomas Allen, senior research analyst for CenTRO and a collaborating researcher in the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

“Tourism doesn’t exist in the way that we traditionally define industries,” Allen said. “Instead, there are a lot of tourism activities that cut across a number of industries. Many businesses don’t even recognize they are in it.”

More than a dozen industry associations representing businesses ranging from dog sledding, golfing and snowmobiling to restaurants, hotels and campgrounds, are connected through the Maine Office of Tourism in Augusta. The CenTRO Web site will be an avenue for coordinating and sharing information, for businesses that could benefit from research already done or that could be developed into projects involving appropriate faculty or student researchers.

“We’re not a marketing organization and our Web site is not intended for use by travelers, as the Maine Office of Tourism has developed an award-winning Web site for that purpose,” Daniel said. “We are a research organization, producing knowledge with which we can help develop strategies that the Office of Tourism, as well as local and regional leaders can use to attract tourists.”

Tourism in the Northeast has not enjoyed the institutional support or state and federal assistance that other industries like fishing, forestry and agriculture have received, partly because the latter have been in states of crisis and decline, according to Colgan. “More importantly,” he added, “there has been this attitude that tourists will just keep coming, no matter what we do.”

Now, “state government and the University of Maine System recognize that it is time to pay serious scholarly attention to tourism, just as it was to pay attention to forestry, fisheries and agriculture,” Colgan said.

“It’s not enough to just do the research,” Colgan said. “We have to get the information out. This is one of CenTRO’s major challenges and that’s why ‘outreach’ is in its name.”

For more information, call Junkins at 581-3102.