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No matter the season, its goal is to make Maine a more prosperous vacationland.
Last month, the Center for Tourism Research and Outreach officially launched its Web site, giving public access to studies on how the state can successfully maintain the tourism industry.
“This project has been in the planning stages since the fall of 2003 with the Blaine House Conference on Natural Resource Industries,” said CenTRO Director Harold Daniel. “That resulted in the call for a Tourism Research Center to be developed by the University of Maine System in Gov. John Baldacci’s 2004 State of the State address.”
According to a report by research firm Longwoods International in 2004, tourism in Maine generates more than 176,000 jobs with $3.8 billion in wages, $531 million in tax revenue and $13.6 billion in sales of goods and services, making it one of the state’s largest industries.
CenTRO’s objective is to provide research and educational programs that are based around recreation and tourism within the state. CenTRO draws its resources from every campus in the university system. Besides informing the public, the Web site will also look to aid state and local officials in the attempt to increase tourism resources.
“Part of our mission down here in our center is economic development, and it was the natural fit with the work we do at the University of Southern Maine,” said CenTRO Associate Director Charlie Colgan. “I think it will contain different kinds of information, and already we want to create a link to a variety of organizations that will continue and expand.”
Ideas for the structure of the Web site came after Daniel visited other tourism-based Web sites operated by universities. Some of the schools included the University of Florida’s Center for Tourism Research and Development and the University of Minnesota’s Tourism Center.
While he was in Minnesota, Daniel learned that other states share some of the same challenges as Maine. During his visit to Florida, he met with people whose backgrounds range from sport tourism to recreation management to risk management in tourism.
“I learned how they organize their approach to those challenges,” Daniel said. “This was a great opportunity to learn how tourism efforts are financed in other states.”
“In both of these cases, I met university center faculty and management, as well as community and industry leaders. Both of these visits were intense because of the diversity and number of people that I met in a short period of time.”
Bangor Daily News