State panel overturns tourism data contract

AUGUSTA – A state panel has granted a Kennebunk-based tourism research firm’s appeal of a contract awarded by the Maine Office of Tourism.

A three-member appeals panel convened by the Bureau of General Services announced late last week that Davidson-Peterson Associates and its parent company Digital Research Inc. successfully showed that the contract, awarded by the Maine Office of Tourism to Longwoods International of Toronto, should be invalidated.

The Maine Office of Tourism will accept new bids on the contract, worth about $250,000 over three years, next month. Both Longwoods and DRI are expected to bid on the contract again.

Longwoods International has had the state contract for tracking visitors and measuring advertising effectiveness since 1996. Longwoods, DRI and two other out-of-state firms bid on the three-year contract in April, and a three-member panel rated each proposal.

With each scorer rating on a 100-point scale, Longwoods garnered 257.23 points, and DRI earned 252.73 points.

Bob Domine, president of DRI, complained that one of the panel members had a conflict of interest.

Domine charged that Peter Daigle, an executive with Lafayette Hotels, a company that owns several lodging businesses in Maine, had ties to Longwoods. Domine said Daigle served on a discussion panel late last year with Longwoods executive Bill Siegel, and that Daigle is on an advisory board for CenTRO, a University of Maine-run tourism research office for which Longwoods provided data.

After a hearing Aug. 10, the appeals panel rejected that portion of DRI’s complaint, but agreed that scores assigned by Daigle were inconsistent with written comments he made on DRI’s proposal.

During the hearing, Daigle testified that his comments “were not written to justify the score,” according to the panel’s findings. But DRI presented evidence that Daigle’s scores “appeared to have been changed without any notation of the reason,” according to the findings.

The panel concluded “that the failure to keep written documentation that supports the scores assigned is a violation of the [state rules for purchases and services] and that because the rule has the force of law, a violation of law has occurred.”

The panel rejected another portion of DRI’s appeal, which asserted that the Maine Office of Tourism should have invited both Longwoods and DRI to make presentations, since the scores given to each were so close.

But the panel noted that the Maine Office of Tourism “would do well to include this provision in the future [requests for proposals]. Whether to conduct demonstrations or interviews would still be entirely at their discretion, but these forums could prove particularly helpful in certain circumstances.”

On Tuesday, Domine conceded that the appeal probably did not endear him and his firm to many in the state’s tourism industry or the Maine Office of Tourism.

“Going through a process like this doesn’t make anybody a whole lot of friends,” he said, but the firm plans to reach out to those in the tourism industry in Maine to persuade others to see DRI as an expert in the field.

“It’s our job to mend bridges and build bridges where there weren’t any,” Domine said.

In 2001, DRI won a similar appeal but again lost out to Longwoods when the state sought new bids on the work.

A telephone call to a Longwoods executive was not returned Tuesday.