Dann Lewis

Goal: To make tourism Maine’s leading industry

Augusta - Maine’s director of tourism, Dann H. Lewis has left a string of success stories in his wake over the years, but now he faces another challenge - making tourism the number-one industry in the state within five years.

Dann Lewis was appointed to head up the state’s tourism office by Governor Angus King, who has made no secret of his desire to promote tourism in Maine.

“It’s a major element in the economic strategy for the state, ” Dann Lewis said in a recent interview. “When I arrived the governor asked me to to prepare a five-year strategy for tourism. One of the major problems, I think, with tourism promotion and development in the past here in Maine is that there’s been no consistent effort. There’s never been a blueprint around which the industry could rally.”

It’s hoped the five-year strategy will remedy that. Dann Lewis said “The bottom line is to see tourism grow geographically, on a year-round basis” - and through tax revenue and job creation, “generally increase it’s contribution to the ecomony.”

Dann Lewis grew up in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire, where he attended Dartmouth College and majored in English literature and mechanical engineering. “After school I went down to the Bahamas and built and operated a small resort, and later wound up as director of marketing for the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism,” Lewis said.

From the Bahamas, Dann Lewis went to the U. S. Virgin Islands where he became director of tourism and oversaw double-digit increases in visitor arrivals. Tha job led him to director of tourism for New York state. After leaving New York, Dann Lewis worked as president of several regional airlines from the West Coast to the Northeast. Though he’s not a commercial pilot, he piloted seaplanes in the Caribbean islands.

The husband of a respected airline consultant and father of two, now resides in South China, Maine.

Dann Lewis said some areas of Maine, particularly the coastline already enjoy status as successful tourist markets. The new challenge is to market the Eastern and inland areas to visitors, and to stretch the season beyond just the summer months.

Similar efforts have paid off in other states, most notably in New York in the late 1970’s when Lewis oversaw the creation of the heart-stopping “I Love New York” campaign. Before the campaign was implemented and promoted on the world stage, there were many areas of upstate New York that did not enjoy a flourishing tourism base and were very much like inland areas of Maine today. Dann Lewis went on to say” I Love New York changed all that, and the prospects here are just as good.”

The most recent economic impact studies done in Maine show tourism account for more than 75,000 jobs and roughly $2.75 billion in expenditures, so its importance to the state cannot be understated, Lewis said.

“I would hazard a guess that at the end of the five-year strategy, you’ll probably see tourism as the number-one industry in the state,” Dann Lewis said.

by: Jonathan Humphrey

Dann Lewis didn’t ease into his new job as director of the Maine Office of Tourism. On his first day, Governor Angus King asked him to figure out how to maximize the value of tourism for Maine. King wanted a written long-term strategy, something the state tourism office had never had before. And he wanted it in three months.

Dann Lewis met his mid-October deadline. He marshalled the advice of business people statewide and crafted a five-year strategy that is likely to drive future discussions of tourism in Maine for years to come.

Dann Lewis’s goal in the plan is to boost tourism expenditures in Maine, last officially estimated at $2.75 billion, by 15 percent by the year 2000. Among other things, the strategy calls for making tourism a year-round industry in Maine.

“It’s an ambitious major program” said Dann Lewis, most recently an executive at several airline companies. But, Lewis said, “you’ve got to have a plan to know where you’re going.”

Dann Lewis admitted that the buggest hurdle over the long-term is likely to be securing adequate funding to further promote and develop tourism. The strategy repeats familiar refrains from past tourism studies, like enticing more tourists to venture inland and into northern Maine and extending the tourism season into traditionally slow months like November and December.

The Dann Lewis strategy has some new twists - ideas that could help Maine market itself without having to dig deeply into state coffers:

• The strategy puts more emphasis on the emerging trend of regional promotion in tourism. The state would continue to project an overall image of Maine. Beneath that marketing umbrella, different regions would market specific activities and packages, and develop a tourism infrastructure in their specific areas.
• The strategy also suggests the state team more often with private businesses, like airlines, car rental companies and tour operators, for more bang for the cooperative dollar. “Virtually everybody in the business should be looking for cooperative dollars to augment their marketing efforts,” Dann Lewis said.

This is familiar turf for Dann Lewis. He worked on the early stages of the blockbuster “I Love New York” campaign earlier in his career. That, he said, was highly leveraged with private funds from domestic and international airlines, companies like Coca Cola and the Broadway theatre owners guild.

Dann Lewis acknowledges that Maine “won’t get that type of scale as New York State, but there are similar opportunities on a smaller scale.”

The point is, Lewis said, “we now have a long term plan, and with tourism a proven economic development engine, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to ignore it.

“From: The Portland Press Herald, November 1995

Dann Lewis is Maine’s (relatively) new Director of Tourism, appointed by Governor Angus King, Jr.

Dann Lewis has been president and vice president of airline industry companies, and has served as Director of Tourism in New York State (overseeing the blockbuster I Love New York tourism campaign), the United States Virgin Islands and also in the Bahamas. He has certainly earned his spurs in all aspects of the tourism industry.

Maine Tour Magazine caught up with him at a meeting at the Holiday Inn By The Bay between another commitment that would bring him to Southern Maine on the same day. In response to a question about Maine’s commitment to the motorcoach industry, Dann Lewis said that it was not defined as yet. Dann Lewis said that the Tourism Department was in the process of developing action plans to go along with a five-year tourism strategy.

When asked what he might have learned about other places that would apply to Maine, Dann Lewis smiled, saying “there’s little new under the sun. A lot of the problems that the industry is facing in Maine today, are the same types of problems that they are facing in the Islands and New York State. Dann Lewis went on the say, “Maine in fact has an outstanding product and a much more varied product than a lot of other areas. There’s an enormous potential here that remains to be tapped.”

Another synergistic effort is Dann Lewis’ participation in Discover New England, a regional consortium formed by the six New England states three years ago specifically to promote New England in international markets.

Dann Lewis and his wife Sherry, have two grown children, both born in the Bahamas. Since Sherry is an airline consultant currently working with American Trans Air in Indianapolis and must travel often, they are hoping to make both commutes easier by settling in the Brunswick area sometime later this year.

Maine winters, says Dann Lewis, are “exhilarating”. He grew up in New Hampshire and Massachusetts so “I adapt fairly well.” Adapting to his new position made this year “very busy,” but for next year he’s “really looking forward to getting into some skiing and snowmobiling.”

This reminds Dann Lewis of times when he used to have ski gear with him when he returned to the Bahamas from promotion tours in Austria. Tourists would see him in the Bahamas airport with his gear and give him looks, thinking maybe “there was something about the Bahamas Islands they weren’t aware of.”

If it’s up to Dann Lewis, there won’t be much about Maine that tourists aren’t aware of!

from: Maine Tour Magazine, 1995

Dann Lewis has done similar work for New York and the Virgin Islands, as well as tourism consulting.
A Texan with a background in the tourism and airline industries was named Tuesday to head Maine’s state tourism office.
Dann H. Lewis is a former director of tourism development for New York state and the U. S. Virgin Islands, and has worked as a marketing consultant for several major clients, the King administration said. He is currently executive vice president of Cirrusair, an air-ground courier service, where he oversaw a corporate restructuring after the company had been sold in a bankruptcy proceeding.
Lewis was one of 13 candidates interviewed and one of only two from outside of Maine, state economic development Commissioner Thomas McBrierty said at a State House news conference. Tourism is Maine’s largest industry.
“He’s been here as a visitor. What he brings is tremendous experience in the tourism industy,” McBrierty said. Governor Angus King, who joined McBrierty in making the announcement, said he wants Lewis to concentrate on coordinating the state’s tourism promotion efforts with private groups that share its goals such as the Maine Publicity Bureau. ”
I would like to see the industry speak with one voice” King said. “I want to change the idea that there is only one ‘tourist season’,” the governor said, referring to ongoing campaigns to lure more visitors to Maine during the traditional off-seasons, to ski in the winter, or take in fall foliage.
Maine spends roughly $2 million a year on tourism promotion. McBrierty said he does not know how that compares with neighboring states but added, “my sense it that it’s relatively low.”
Dann Lewis, who did not attend the news conference, holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

From: Associated Press, June 1995

Dann H. Lewis has seen Maine through a tourist’s eyes. He has flown into the Portland Jetport, dined on Maine lobster, visited friends along the coast and canoed through Western Maine on the Ossipee River.

Now, the Dallas airline executive will travel to Augusta. But this time, he’s staying. Dann Lewis begins a job on Monday as the director of the Maine Office of Tourism, the top government position in one of the state’s largest industries.

Lewis will oversee an office with an annual budget of $1.8 million and a four-person staff. His primary mission will be to market Maine as a tourism destination. Industry observers say Dann Lewis’ most challenging tasks will be to promote the state despite tight budget constraints and to unite diverse interests within the tourism industry behind those efforts.

Lewis said in a telephone interview that one of his primary goals will be to “get the government side and the private-sector side to work more harmoniously. That’s that I’ve found is very necessary and very beneficial in the other regions I’ve worked in.”

Dann Lewis has worked in many other regions during the 36-year course of his career. He’s headed tourism efforts for some big-name destination spots: the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and New York State where he was in on the early stages of the “I Love New York” campaign.

Bern Rotman, director of communications for the New York State Department of Economic Development, said Lewis “had a pivotal role to play” in generating tourism industry support for the “I Love New York” campaign.

“Dann’s role was extremely important at a time when we started the advertising in a very big way,” Rotman said.

Lewis will have a lot less money to work with in Maine, where the tourism budget is only one-sixth the size of New York’s. But Lewis has shown himself to be creative in using scarce resources, Rotman said. One way he has done that, Rotman said, is by seeking public-private partnerships - a common theme of Governor Angus King’s administration.
Dann Lewis has spent nearly all his adult life in the travel industry. Immediately after graduating from Dartmouth College he went to the Bahamas and built a resort. “I did everything from drawing the plans to laying the blocks to doing the electrical wiring,” he said.
Lewis subsequently ran his own tourism related development company, worked for years in the public sector for tourism offices and did consulting for clients such as Six Flags Corporation, a big amusement park operator. He’s spent the last decade working for small airline companies, two of which he helped restructure following bankruptcy proceedings.
Job’s a nice fit
Lewis says the job of tourism director in Maine dovetails with both his personal and professional interests. For one thing, he said, he and his wife have been wanting to return to New England for the past three years. They own a summer home in Freedom, N. H. on the Maine-New Hampshire border. They have friends in Maine. And Lewis grew up in Massachusetts.

Professionally too, the job seemed to be a good fit. Lewis said he decided to apply while visiting friends in York earlier this year. While there, he read a newspaper article describing King’s belief in the importance of tourism to the Maine economy. It struck a chord.

Lewis became one of 13 applicants - and one of only two out-of-staters - interested in the tourism job. His appointment was announced in late June.

Lewis was chosen because of his broad experience and the administration’s sense that he would “be good at teamwork,” said Tom McBrierty, commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development and Lewis’s boss.

The announcement has been greeted with relief, and curiosity, by Maine’s tourism industry. The relief comes from the fact that the post has finally been filled after a vacancy of three months. The curiosity stems from the fact that few in Maine’s tourism industry know Lewis or have even met him.
One exception is Karen Peterson, president of a York based marketing research firm, Davidson-Peterson Associates. She and Lewis have been friends for over 20 years. Also, his resume includes a five year stint as senior marketing consultant and West Coast director of her firm.

Peterson calls Lewis a “very gentle and quietly intelligent person, with a commanding knowledge of what makes tourism the world’s largest industry”. “What we need most in this industry in Maine is consensus-building” said Peterson. “He doesn’t bring any baggage. He’s not on one side or the other.”

From: Portland Press Herals/Maine Sunday Telegram - July 1995 by Kim Strosnider

St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands: Dann H. Lewis has been named Senior Vice President and General Manager for Virgin Islands Seaplane Shuttle with services between its maintenance headquarters in St. Croix, with services to San Juan Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. John, and the British Virgin Islands. According to Lewis, the airline has been in recent discussions with TWA for a code-share designation between all its routes and TWA’s Caribbean hub located in San Juan. Dann Lewis most recently had been president and chief operating officer of Resort Commuter Airlines, a Trans World Express designated carrier operating from multiple locations within California. Prior to that, Dann Lewis had been first Board Chairman of Bahamasair, the national flag carrier of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Director of Tourism for the United States Virgin Islands, and Director of Tourism for the State of New York, having launched the world acclaimed “I Love New York” campaign.

From: St. Croix Avis, March 1988

TWA has won a presence at lucrative, flight-restricted John Wayne Airport by contracting with a regional airline to bring passengers from Orange County’s airport to Los Angeles International
President of the airline, Dann Lewis, stated that as part of the agreement, Orange County based Resort Commuter Airlines has changes its name and livery to Trans World Express. Lewis said that TWA has similar agreements with other commuter and regional airlines around the country, all operating under the name of Trans World Express. “It’s an extension of the trunk airlines route schedule,” he said.
Other major airlines also have such arrangements: American Airlines has American Eagle, United has United Express, Delta has Delta Connection, to name a few.
Resort Commuter continues to offer tickets to non-TWA affiliated passengers at $49 each way and joint fares with other airlines on connections to long distance flights out of LAX, said Lewis. TWA however, will offer the connections for free out of Orange County on many of its discount fares as well as on more expensive seats in its inventory, he said.
For example, as part of the promotion of the new Orange County service, TWA is offering a round-trip fare to New York for $198 from John Wayne, while the lowest fare available out of LAX alone is $258, Dann Lewis said.
From: Orange County Register, October 30, 1987

Established just two years ago, Southern California based Resort Commuter Airlines has concluded an affiliation agreement with TWA and changed its name and livery to Trans World Express, Dann H. Lewis, president of Resort Commuter announced.

As Trans World Express, the airline will provide greatly improved feeder service to Los Angeles from numerous Southern California cities, including Oxnard and Palm Springs. Dann Lewis said that Resort Commuter carries more than 50 percent of all passengers from Orange County (John Wayne) to Los Angeles International. Lewis went on to say that these arrangements with TWA will allow Resort Commuter to exchange passengers and maintain joint fares with most domestic and international carriers.
As a code-share of TWA, Trans World Express is establishing its own operations center within the TWA area in Terminal Three at LAX. Dann Lewis said that in addition to providing customer service and a ramp base at LAX, TW Express will maintain its high profile at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.
Mr. Lewis said the airline has applied for permits to construct a mini-terminal north of the existing John Wayne main terminal and adjacent to designated ramp areas for loading regional aircraft. The new facility will accommodate up to three regional carriers.
The association with TWA, Dann Lewis said, will ensure a level of market recognition and penetration far in excess of what an independent commuter carier can command. Publishing its flight schedules unter the “TW” code in airline guides, travel publications and airline computer reservations systems (CRS’s) will enhance its name recognition and marketability.
Before joining Resort Commuter, Dann Lewis, who will continue as president of Trans World Express, was chairman of Bahamasair, the flag carrier of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. He also served as director of tourism for the State of New York and the U. S. Virgin Islands. He participated in the launch of the now famous “I Love New York” campaign and consulted on the current California State tourism marketing blitz.
From: Orange County Register, by Jack Ballard, October 30, 1986

New York - Dann H. Lewis, New York State deputy commissioner and director of tourism development, recently received the “Outstanding New Yorker” award from the New York City Junior Chamber of Commerce for his important contributions in the marketing and promotion of both New York City and State.

The occasion was celebrated at the Junior Chamber’s third annual Big Apple Banquet, which was held at the elegant Park Lane Hotel.

Praise and honors are no strangers to Dann Lewis, who came to his demanding deputy commissioner’s position in the New York State Department of Commerce from the directorship of the U. S. Virgin Islands department of tourism, and the marketing director’s post with the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. In his latter capacity he helped establish Bahamasair, the national airline of the Bahamas, of which he subsequently became the first chairman. With this impressive background Dann Lewis was eminently qualified for the difficult task of bringing to the attention of business travelers and tourists the facilities, sights and cultural treasures of New York City and New York State. His expertise was translated into the remarkable success of the state’s “I Love New York” promotion campaign on one hand - which he coordinated - and the vastly increased awareness throughout New York of the importance of meetings, conventions and incentive groups to the Empire State’s economy, and morale on the other - an awareness which Dann Lewis fostered.

For all these reasons, Meeting and Conventions congratulates Dann Lewis.

From: Meetings and Conventions Magazine - May, 1980 - by Mel Hosanski

The “I Love New York” campaign has brought many thousands of new visitors, which means more tax revenues to New York State — but individual municipalities and attractions will have to do their own work to draw those tourists through the turnstiles, Dann H. Lewis said yesterday.

Dann Lewis is justifiably proud of the campaign’s record because he originated it as deputy commissioner of New York State’s Division of Tourism. He spoke yesterday at the Rochester County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Lewis went on to say, “I would warn you that the success of the program does not mean that individual resorts and attractions should automatically expect to see more business coming in with little effort on their part. Individual attractions must continue to advertise.”
But the potential is there if they do, Dann Lewis believes. His speech cited figure after figure to show the research the division did before starting the “I Love New York” campaign and the results it has had. Among the figures Lewis cited:
* The travel industry employs 200,000 full-time in New York state and brings $6 billion per year in sales. It’s the No. 2 industry in New York. But before 1977 there had been a steady decline in the tourism budget and in New York’s market share in the Northeast.
* Research showed that outside New York City the “promotable” attractions were clearly outdoors - the lakes and mountains and unequalled scenic beauty of the state.
* New York ranked low - at 8 percent - a few years ago for “top of mind” awareness of the state. That figure has more than tripled and is growing monthly. “Even better,” Dann Lewis added, “all of this can be traced to their awareness of our advertising. Without the ads, there would have been no change at all.”
* In 1977, the first year the ads concentrated on upstate, the number of overall trips by tourists to the Northeastern states remained about the same as the previous year — stagnant — but trips to New York state increased by 24 percent. The big loser was the New England states.
Lewis figured there were over 1,850,000 individual trips to New York, conservatively estimating that the trips brought in $200 million in income and $14 million in taxes.
Dann Lewis said during the first 18 months of the campaign $10.9 million was spent for advertising and other forms of marketing. “That’s about a 6 to 1 ratio of tax dollars generated to advertising expense, a ratio I’m sure we can all live with.”
Apart from its dollar effect the campaign brought in 11 major awards, including a special Tony award. “We started out with an effective idea and it just snowballed all over the world,” Lewis said. “New Yorkers all over the state have a renewed sense of pride — we see people wearing the I Love New York buttons and putting bumper stickers on their cars. Even New York City Taxi Drivers are saying “come visit again soon” as they drop people off at the state’s metropolitan airports.
From: Rochester News, by Anne Tanner, Financial Editor