They’re not far off now.

SUVs sporting Massachusetts and New York plates. Bigger-than-life, crammed with tents and coolers, CD players, wakeboards and teens with ballcaps pulled down.

They’ll appear for Memorial Day weekend and locals will sound a familiar chorus: the end of the world as they knew it.

Mostly the complaints are soft, however, not to be heard over piped restaurant music, printing gas receipts and reservation phone calls.

Mainers, after all, earned their tag as shrewd entrepreneurs. And in this harsh economy, more people than ever are banking on what is arguably the state’s largest and most important industry.

“Tourism provides a huge number of jobs here,” said Dann Lewis. He directed the Maine Office of Tourism from 1996 until this year. Lewis noted the steady growth in travel and tourism. Overnight trips to Maine increased by 2 percent in 2001, versus the national decline of 2 percent that year.

Reliance on the industry in Maine has become more obvious, Lewis said, as other sectors have dwindled in the last two decades.

“It is not something you should look at as replacing everything that we are losing,” said Lewis, acting commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development. “But it’s a very solid underpinning, and something that can be relied upon.”

Maine – whose sleepy image in popular culture was often matched by its laid-back approach to tourism marketing – is sharpening its competitive edge.

The state hired a Park Avenue firm to create its next generation of advertising, touting “It Must be Maine” on the pages of national magazines. The tourism office is distributing the new logos and themes to businesses and nonprofit groups, pushing for a higher level of coordination. Many visitor centers have touch-screen computers, and an e-brochure unveiled this month represents the first of its kind for state tourism promotion.

Most importantly for industry backers, the state tourism budget was ramped to nearly $7 million annually, up from $1.5 million in the mid-1990s.

“In years past, Maine did little to advertise for visitors,” said Vaughn Stinson, executive director of the Maine Tourism Association, a private group that works with the state and businesses to promote the industry. “That has all changed as many states recognized the value of visitors’ dollars to their economy.

“Competition,” Stinson said, “made our industry search for new and better ways to attract visitors to Maine.”

Travel is expected to generate $750 million in tax revenues in the upcoming two fiscal years in Maine, at least 15 percent of the state’s total $5 billion budget for that period.

“That’s an enormous amount,” Lewis said. “There is nothing else to compare that to in the Maine economy.”

More than 100,000 jobs – one out of every six in Maine – are supported by travel and tourism, according to Longwoods International, a Toronto-based research firm.

Adults took 43 million day and overnight trips here in 2001, the last year for which comprehensive records are available. Those visitors spent about $5.6 billion on food, lodging, leisure activities, retail goods and transportation, boosting state tax receipts by $344 million.

“Tourism cuts across several industry codings, in retail, services, transportation,” reads a December 2001 study by the Maine State Planning Office. The office concluded that tourism can fairly be called Maine’s largest industry, and tourism-related employment is much more concentrated in Maine than in the nation.

A strong post-war economy and a revolution in transportation kicked off the tourism boom in the 1950s, but in Maine the education process about the importance of tourism is still ongoing between legislators and those within the industry.

As tourism gained steam after 1980, many in the state remained hesitant about the growing role of tourism in the economy. Some worried about the effects of too many visitors on the environment, a concern that resounds loudly today. Others focused on preservation of agricultural, fishing and manufacturing jobs.

The traditional attitude was that Maine’s beaches, mountains and cities would sell themselves, and that private enterprises did not need a boost from the state. Such expectations were not surprising, considering the youth of the industry in Maine, said Dina Jackson, a former tourism office staffer.

For most of the past century the coast was known much more for the fish it produced than the tourists it drew. Likewise, the woods were the territory of Maine paper companies and sportsmen, not considered a marketable haven for stressed-out urbanites.

“I remember thinking I wouldn’t see that day” when the state recognized it could increase tax revenues by promoting tourism, said Jackson, who worked in the tourism office from 1988 to 1996. She is now an economic development specialist with the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments.

“With the high return on the state investment, we thought it only made sense to increase the budget,” Jackson said. “We had to prove what the industry is worth.”

That effort was spearheaded in the 1990s by Gov. Angus King, Dann Lewis and industry groups such as the Maine Tourism Association. The data clearly showed Maine’s reliance on tourism for tax revenues and jobs.

Unique tourism technology

Lewis urged more attention to data tracking: He wanted to know who was spending, how much, where and, most importantly, why. The tourism office hired Longwoods International to calculate the impact of the industry. Intense research allowed the office to show legislators a correlation between promotion and the cars on our roads.

In the 1990s, Maine generally ranked among the bottom five states in promotional spending. Yet compared to most others, Maine was more dependent on the wallets of visitors.

In 2001, Maine ranked 41st in tourism spending, Stinson said. Massachusetts was at 22, Connecticut at 30, Vermont at 38, New Hampshire at 39, and Rhode Island at 46. The state tourism budget was $4.2 million that year, while the national average was $13.7 million, ranging from $2 million to more than $60 million per state.

Current rankings were not available, but Lewis said the state has climbed several notches. That’s because the Legislature approved a dedicated funding stream for the office, recycling a percentage of meals and lodging receipts back to promotion. The projected budget for fiscal year 2004 is $6.9 million.

About $2 million per year goes to Warren Kremer Paino, the New York City firm producing advertising for the state. Its major goals are to attract more first-time visitors, increase the length and frequency of stays, and make tourism a year-round industry. WKP’s efforts so far emphasized brand development. Key elements to the “brand called Maine,” according to the firm’s planning documents, include authenticity, independence and outdoor activities.

Lewis has been pleased with the agency’s progress. He also is excited about the advances in technology. The new e-brochure, made possible with help from the Maine Tourism Association, uses Mobular Engines technology developed by former NASA engineers. It allows Internet users full access to the tourism guidebook, Maine Invites You, while recording data on what promotions are popular.

“We’re the only state that has the ability at this point to get our entire planning guide into someone’s hands in seconds,” Lewis said. That process costs about 75 cents per e-mail, compared to about $3.50 to send the hard-copy version.

“I think Maine is not only holding its own when it comes to tourism,” Lewis said, “we’re staying a bit ahead of the competition.”

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