No – your children won’t get eaten by a bear if you visit Maine!

120513YNPD30082-MAs we approach Maine’s “tourism season,” this column, written and published originally in 2012, remains relevant.

The couple from Calgary, Canada crossed the border in Montana on their way to a birding adventure in Brownsville, Texas. The U.S. border guard told them they were foolish to go to Brownsville, calling it the “arm pit” of the United States.

Luckily, they didn’t turn back, arriving to find Brownsville a great city with a thriving economy and exceptional bird watching opportunities.

On our own Texas birding adventure in April of 2012, we encountered that Calgary couple at a state park in the Rio Grande Valley and told them our own less-than-welcoming experience. At a federal wildlife reserve, our very first stop to see birds, the ranger at the counter told us, “You’re too late. The birds left last week.”

She elaborated, noting that there were no ducks, their pond had dried up, and smaller birds were staying hidden because they had a lot of hawks. We’re glad we paid no attention to her, because we saw a lot of birds in that park that day, including a species of duck we’d never seen before.

All of us can learn a lesson from these two incidents. When greeting tourists, focus on the positive!   It would have been so easy for that ranger to tell us what birds were still present in the refuge. Having just arrived, we didn’t want to hear, “You should have been here yesterday.”

Just before leaving for Texas, I participated in a Maine Woods Consortium conference focused on “Profiting from Quality.” This group is hoping to expand the number of visitors to the Maine Woods by creating, certifying, and marketing quality experiences. The Consortium includes a diverse group of participants from sporting camp owners to downtown associations to nonprofits to government agencies and covers Franklin, Oxford, Somerset, Piscataquis, Penobscot, Aroostook, and Washington counties.

I learned a lot at the conference and thought about what quality means to a tourist, throughout my visit to Texas. We enjoyed excellent lodging and meals, and were impressed with the infrastructure built around birding, from brochures to websites to ten “World Birding Centers.”

At the Maine Woods Consortium’s conference, I was surprised to learn that only 3 percent of visitors came to the woods to hunt and 5 percent to fish. Clearly, our traditional outdoor activities and economy are in trouble. Other problems are also apparent. At focus groups in New York, researchers found that potential Maine woods visitors are concerned about bears eating their children.

I immediately conjured up a TV ad listing the number of people killed by alligators in Florida, coyotes in Texas, mountain lions in California, and bears in Alaska, summed up with this fact: the number of people killed by wild animals in Maine last year: ZERO!

Hey, negative ads work for the politicians, so why not for Maine’s tourism industry? Slam the competition!

David Vail, a retired Bowdoin economics professor who continues to research and write about tourism issues, reported at the conference that less than 40 percent of visitors to the Maine woods would recommend the destination to others. This certainly suggests that the quality is not there and it definitely indicates that a strong campaign is needed to direct visitors to the best places.

I would focus more marketing on summer residents, as distinguished from summer visitors. Summer residents spend a lot of money in Maine and do a lot of traveling here. And they obviously already like us and our state. We should also remember that many visitors to the Maine woods are Maine residents and work to increase their visits to the woods. They’re smart enough not to worry about bears.

Social media is vital today. The recommendations of your Facebook friends are more important than TV or other advertising. Many tourists plan their trips using their computer or phone. No photos on your website? No customers!

Before we got to Texas, we’d seen our hotel rooms, the menus of the restaurants we planned to visit, other traveler’s reviews of those hotels and restaurants, the trails we’d walk, and the birds we’d see.

After a year-and-a-half of traveling our state with Linda and writing about it in our weekly Travelin’ Maine(rs) column, published on Sundays in the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel (and accessible on my website, www.georgesmithmaine.com), I can tell you that Maine has a lot of great inns, restaurants, and experiences, from the coast to the north woods.

One of the Consortium’s organizers, the Appalachian Mountain Club, provided us with a very high quality Maine woods experience in February at their Gorman-Chairback Lodge and Cabins east of Greenville. Those experiences are out there in the Maine woods. And you won’t get eaten by a bear!

Update: The Maine Woods Consortium is still at it, led by Mike Wilson. Last year they launched a Rural Recreation Destination Area project, and continues to focus on expanding economic and job opportunities in rural Maine. And Linda and I are now in our 6th year of writing that weekly travel column.

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.