“Anything for our guests, Joe,” I replied. “But tell me a bit about your friend Andy, one of his buddies has what looks like a fairly recent wound in his shoulder; he was exercising it in the water and getting teased about being ‘careless’ by some of the other men.”

Joe looked a bit uncomfortable and glanced around to make sure there was no one withing earshot. He then explained that he had met Andy in Miami when he was day sailing off of Miami Beach and advertising the Bonfire Restaurant with an insignia on his mainsail. Andy had chartered with him for several years and had been comfortable with Joe. “He tries to be normal and relax on vacation once in a while…..Andy’s fairly high up in the Mafia in Canada, and has to get away once in a while.” “He’s always been straight with me, pays his bills and is good to all his friends and family….so I like him.”

A couple of days later Joe told me that Andy wanted to sail to Nassau on the “Bonfire” on Thursday, stay overnight at Yacht Haven, and have his plane take them all back to Canada from Nassau. “Could you give me a hand on the way down?” he asked. “Weren’t you going to the Big Island anyway?” Always ready for a sail, I agreed. I figured I could do my errands on Friday and catch the afternoon flight back to North Eleuthera.

As usual, Thursday was a bright and sunny day with a fine northeast breeze, perfect for a beam reach down the chain of islands to Nassau. Andy and his men loaded their gear on the Bonfire and we all set off right after breakfast.

After we cleared Current Cut under power and were on course for Current Light, I took the wheel while Joe supervised the guests and got the sails up. We bore off for Nassau and a short while later, a couple of Andy’s men brought several duffle bags up on deck and proceeded to pass out handguns and ammo to their buddies. Joe brought up a trash barrel with a few weeks of beer and liquor bottles which became floating targets for volley after volley from the men lining the port side of the “Bonfire”. The game of marksmanship lasted for several hours, interspersed with debates on who was the best shot, and by the time we reached Nassau the artillery was packed away, and Joe and I were thanked for a wonderful trip!

This was obviously a sail that I would never forget….and as they say, in the Caribbean the Carnival Never Stops…NEVER!

By Dann Lewis - May 27, 2008

Eleuthera, Bahamas: The Current Club was nearly full to capacity on warm Spring day, thanks to eight rather tough looking men who arrived the previous day on a DeHavilland Dove all the way from Canada. “Andy”, the owner of the aircraft and obvious leader of the group was a friend of Captain Joe “Bonfire” Edwards who had been day sailing his ‘48 schooner from our dock for several months. Joe had asked me if a group of men would be welcome at the Club, since our normal clientele tended to be couples. I welcomed the extra business, and didn’t think much of Joe’s offhanded comment “that’s great, some places won’t take Andy and his men….”

The group had been a bit overdressed for an Out Island Resort, sporting dark suits and black shiny shoes at dinner after their arrival, but were well-behaved and turned in early.

The next morning one of the men came into the office and asked where they could find a good swimming beach…I gave them directions to a beautiful stretch of beach with a gradual slope into the turquoise waters on the opposite side of the island from the Club. Some 45 minutes later a swarthy member of the group came into the office and said, “Andy would like you to please come over to the beach.” I took one of our golf carts and the two of us set out for the beach party. As I pulled to a stop, Andy approached me and rather sheepishly said “most of the boys can’t swim so good, and we’d appreciate it if you could watch when they go in the water in case there’s a problem. You can swim good, can’t you?” he asked anxiously. I assured him that I could, and would be glad to act as lifeguard while they enjoyed the water. I thought to myself that hauling one of these guys out of the water would be some feat, because the smallest one appeared to outweigh me by at least 100 pounds…

Fortunately, I was not called upon to rescue anyone; my mere presence seemed to be sufficient for the men to relax and splash around for nearly an hour. When they had enough, I was thanked profusely and gratefully escaped back to some mundane paperwork at the Club.

For a multitude of reasons, the Carnival in the Caribbean never stops. Stand by for “Andy” Part Two.

By Dann Lewis - May 23, 2008

In his later years, Howard Hughes was known for being secretive and eccentric. His wealth enabled him to retain staff who were quite successful in shielding him from the press, process servers and the merely curious.

When Mr. Hughes and his considerable entourage moved from Las Vegas to Nassau, Bahamas in the wee hours of the morning in November of 1970, the fact of his arrival was noticed and widely spread throughout the Island within hours. The advance planning for his move from the U. S. to this off-shore location was extensive, as were the “renovations” that had taken place on the eighth and ninth floors of the Britannia Beach Hotel, where he and his key assistants and security staff were to reside.

Other staff, such as his nine pilots and their families were in rental houses in a modest middle-class neighborhood less than a mile from from the airport. While the somewhat reticent pilots were either on standby at the airport or busy shuttling back and forth to the U. S., their spouses and children were quietly integrated into the neighborhood and inevitably talked about their nomadic experiences facilitated by the whims of their husband’s employer.

At that time, I was involved in negotiations to form Bahamasair with Out Islands Airways, the major fixed base and charter operator at Nassau’s airport. Some time prior to the Hughes presence on the island, the president of Out Island Airways told me that they had a customer who wanted to lease their main hangar, and asked if that would complicate the Bahamasair negotiations. I saw no major difficulties, but asked to see the lease before it was finalized; and soon discovered that the space was to house some of the six aircraft in Howard Hughes personal fleet. Ultimately it was decided that only half of the hangar was required, and the Hughes representatives insisted that a line be painted delineating the space under Hughes lease, and the agreement clearly stated that under no circumstances were any Out Island Airways personnel or third parties (meaning my Bahamasair pilots, flight attendants, and maintenance crews) to step over the line or otherwise trespass in the space rented by Howard Hughes…..

Early in 1972 the entire Hughes contingent withdrew from Nassau with virtually a moments notice. As was reported by the spouses of the pilots, they were notified at noon to pack up, retrieve the children, and be ready to leave the Island no later than 6:00 PM.

The Hughes Nassau invasion ended as quickly as it had begun, and the next we would hear of Mr. Hughes was from his new residence in Nicaragua.

By Dann Lewis

In the 1950’s and 60’s the (then) British Colony of the Bahamas was a magnet for colorful characters from many parts of the world, including supposed or true ex-military notables, soldiers of fortune, titans of business, celebrities, rogues of various stripes and others seeking an escape from Life or the Law, or just a peaceful place in the sun. Many of these “expatriates” kept a fairly low profile while others were of a more flamboyant nature.

The following is a short list (but by no means more than the tip of the iceberg) of some of the individuals who passed through, lived for a time or visited regularly in the Islands in the Sun: Burl Ives, Sloan Wilson, Craig Kelley, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Sydney Oakes, Sir Patrick Hennessey and Howard Hughes.

Visitors to the Bahamas during this period may have known some of these characters or run across them in the course of their Island Adventures. Others may be surprised to learn of what was going on unnoticed during their travels! I will recount some of these goings on in future posts, and invite any readers to contribute their own recollections as well.

Stand by for some stories that are wildly colorful, document the birth of modern tourism as we know it, and are unabashedly true!

By: Dann Lewis

Maine tourism officials conducted their first actual market research in over a decade only to learn a disappointing fact: most people who have never visited the state think Maine must be boring. The $300,000 study revealed that most people think the state is just so many rocks and pine trees

What’s worse, it turns out that Maine’s own advertisements may be reinforcing that very idea, at least according to the consultant the state hired to conduct the research. In his report he wrote…

Compared to the ideal, Maine lacks excitement.

Tourism officials in Maine are hopping to change that boring image with a new advertising campaign while they attempt to improve people’s perception of the state and reclaim lost tourism market share. WHen it come to people who both live and vacation in the Northeastern states, Maine’s share of those tourism dollars fell from 4.5% in 1994 to 3.5% in 1997.

The Director of the Maine Office of Tourism, Dann Lewis, stated that he was hopeful about turning around the states sagging numbers before the end of the year, ideally even overtaking some of the neighboring states. Dann Lewis said

We are not intending to stay where we are. The market research gave us the direction that we need to sharpen our advertising image.

It’s been more than a decade since Maine’s done any real market research. For what seems like just about forever the ad agencies the state has contracted with use those grandiose scenic panoramas with lighthouses, lakes and rocky coastlines. As an example, the Spring ad from last year had a cottage near a lake with a couple soaking in the picturesque view of the lake and surrounding forest.

Beautiful. But Boring.

These types of ads just served to reinforce that boring perception for the state said the firm that conducted the research, Longwoods International. During his presentation, Bill Siegel explained that

Large, scenic pictures say, “remote and barren.” A sense of life and human activity is critical.

A new ad campaign is scheduled launch shortly on TV in New York along with print ads in publications such as Coastal Living and New York Times Magazine. These will have variations of five or six “people” scenes. Examples include a couple dining in a restaurant, people hiking, and snowmobilers.

Dann Lewis said the research contained in the report confirmed that Maine also attracts a market state officials were uncertain of: outdoor adventurers. Dann Lewis noted that the state’s many white-water-rafting and snowmobile touring operations give it a competitive edge when compared to other states in the region.

As a result of these findings the ad campaign will also feature active people on sailboats and mountain bikes in ad buys in places like National Geographic Adventure magazine.

Dann Lewis, who has served as tourism director in Maine since 1995, was named in January to the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International “Hot List of Top 25 for 2005.” Lewis and the 24 others were selected because of their ability to develop marketing strategies that are truly innovative and clever and that get results. In asking for their picks, senior executives from around the globe were told to submit nominees who best exemplified the set criteria: Whose marketing strategies are truly innovative and clever? Whose companies represent a sales-focused organization? Who gets results? Whose work do you wish were your own?

Submitted nominations were reviewed and scored the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association Internationals executive committee, resulting in the third annual “Top 25″ list.

Dann Lewis has been tourism director for such notable destinations as the Bahamas, the U. S. Virgin Islands, New York (where he originated the famous “I Love New York” marketing campaign) and most recently, the State of Maine.

Congratulations to Dann Lewis!

From: Hospitality Net Industy News - January 2006

This move can be seen as a logical follow-up to their victorious press conference on November 6th at which they announce the 11:1 return on investment for their media dollar. After turning a $612,000 investment in advertising into $6.98 million in increased sales and lodging tax revenues, Tom McBrierty and Dann Lewis appear to be keeping up the pressure to grow this sector of the state’s economy.

This preliminary hearing in early December was also a rehearsal for the public hearings of the appropriations process beginning on January 6th. This requested increase in the annual budget to $5.4 million is another incremental step in Dann Lewis’s five-year plan to get Maine up there with its New England neighbors. With New Hampshire allocating $6 million, Vermont $8 million and Massachusetts investing $17 million, Dann Lewis’s aim is to get Vacationland up into the $8 million range from its $2 million starting line, by the end of his Great March.

The bulk of this special appropriations will go for advertising. As the marketing season for summer approaches, Dann Lewis and his team are huddled with their consultants. Longwoods International will continue to be retained to measure the effectiveness of media spending and to assist with a range of market research. The Toronto based firm will continue to analyze factors such as visitor profiles, destinations, visitor preferences and Maine’s image to outsiders.

Dann Lewis’s approach to tourism marketing has always been research driven.

from: Maine Biz, by Alan Long

Paul Rickert, operations manager of Northern Outdoors, and me, Roberta Scruggs, staff writer for the Portland Press Herald, were part of an intrepid band that embarked on an 83-mile snowmobile excursion from the Forks to Sugarloaf on January 23. Also along for the ride were Governor Angus King; Dann Lewis, director of the state tourism office; Scott Ramsey, head of the conservation department’s snowmobile division; several members of the Maine Snowmobile Association; and other folks from Northern Outdoors, an adventure resort at the forks.

The trek was born during a year of daydreaming by Bob Meyers, executive director of the snowmobile association. The Governor came along to boost and important - $226 million annually - industry. We all stayed the night at Northern Outdoors wo we could set out at around 8:30 a.m. Outside it was 17 below zero - not with the wind chill, just plain 17 below zero. The metal door handle burned our fingers. The snow crunched under our feet like potato chips. The inside of every nose was icy, and the air was so cold that any deep breath ended in a cough.

Although most of our group was experienced, Dann Lewis had never been on a snowmobile before. Lowell Smith Jr., the state police detective along to protect the governor had not ridden since he was 12 — 30 years ago. King hasn’t ridden much, but his experience with motorcycles was a plus.

Some of our problems were unique, but many were common to beginning snowmobilers, and were the result of the frigid weather. Dann Lewis, Lowell Smith and I all found it hard to see through our helmets. “The first two hours I was tinkering around, trying to get the right balance to keep from freezing my eyeballs off and trying to get rid of the fog”, Dann Lewis said.

Like him I was peering through three layers of frost - my glasses, my helmet’s visor and the snowmobile’s windscreen. I fiddled with the visor all day, sometimes peering through the frost, sometimes enduring the cold blast of air to clear it.

Bundled up as we were though, it seemed almost too warm at times. I had four layers on from the waist down and six - long underwear, flannel shirt, wool vest, sweater, winter coat and snowmobile suit on my upper body. One of the Northern Outdoors guides had to wrestle me into the snowmobile suit and put my big mittens on. I felt like an Apollo astronaut headed for the moon. Dann Lewis too, found himself groping to describe the sense of near paralysis. “I kept thinking, ‘I feel like the Michelin man’,” he said. “I was sort of walking around like a stiff scarecrow or the Tin Woodsman without any oil.”

That stiffness contributed to another major problem - we weren’t leaning. Shifting your weight really helps the snowmobile track better, but instead, we were just sitting there - as flexible as a tombstone - trying to steer it like a car. That doesn’t work so well.

Did I mention that this trek was 83 miles? Once the trip was over, we could all laugh…….

from: Portland Press Herald January 1998, by Roberta Scruggs, Staff Writer

Tourism spending rose in 2005, state reports

Overnight travelers spent $3.1 billion last year, ending a four-year slump.

“It means we’re not only riding the wave, but we’re being more successful than others.” Charles Colgan Associate director, Maine’s new Center for Tourism Research and Outreach
Maine’s tourism industry broke out of a four year slump in 2005 and increased the total number of overnight trips to the state by 9 percent and the number of overnight vacationers by 12 percent, figures being released today show. Taken together, overnight travelers made 9.7 million trips and spent 15 percent more last year than in 2004, leaving behind $3.1 billion spent on meals, lodging, purchases and services.

The state tourism office credited better marketing and promotion, good summer weather and rising gasoline prices that kept motorists closer to home for the exceptionally strong showing. “2005 was a very good year,” said Dann Lewis, the state’s tourism director. “It reversed a trend that had been soft for four years in the aftermath of 9-11.”

The data are part of an extensive report prepared annually for Maine’s tourism office by Longwoods International, a Canadian travel research firm. Maine’s tourism industry is the largest single contributor to Maine’s economy. Tourism generated $13.6 billion in sales and provided 176,600 jobs in 2004, according to data gathered by Longwoods and the tourism office.

Despit that, Maine and New England in general have struggled to attract more visitors over the past four years. Competition from other destinations, the legacy of the 2001 terrorist attacks and othe factors have been blamed for the slump.
Maine responded by hiring a New York City advertising agency that revamped the tourism marketing campaign and redesigned the state’s Web site. Both actions had come under fire by critics who questioned specific elements of these efforts, but the 2005 results suggest those changes are making a difference.
That’s one conclusion that can be drawn for the 12 percent jump in overnight trips that Longwoods International defines as “marketable.” These trips reflect discretionary vacation travel, not visits to friends and relatives. In the tourism industry, marketable trips are of special interest because they can be influenced by advertising and promotion.
“These are people who made a choice to come to Maine,” said Charles Colgan, associate director of Maine’s new Center for Tourism Research and Outreach at the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine. By comparison, overnight vacation trips grew nationally by only 2 percent, Colgan noted.
At the same time, Maine’s share of trips by Northeast residents grew by 14 percent. Massachusetts saw a 10 percent rise, and the other New England states had little or no growth. That’s also an important indicator. Maine competes with the other New England states for visitors, and the largest share of Maine tourists come from Massachusetts, New York and other Northeast states.

“It means we’re not only riding the wave,” Colgan said, “but we’re being more successful than the others.”

Dann Lewis and Charles Colgan agree that the strong performance in 2005 raises expectations for 2006. “I wouldn’t expect another 14 percent in market share,” Dann Lewis said, “but we’re hoping for a reasonable showing in 2006.”

from: Portland Press Herald - August 17, 2006 by Tux Turkel

The man who now runs the state’s tourism office does not pull any punches - but he’s getting results.  Nothing annoys Dann Lewis more than the phone calls he gets around Labor Day each year from television and newspaper reporters asking how the tourism season went. The Season, he delights in telling them, hasn’t gone anywhere. “The assumption that it’s over is crazy’” declares Lewis, director of the Maine Office of Tourism.The Labor day deadline is a prime example of Old Tourism. Dann Lewis is New Tourism, and he is bound and determined to shake up traditional ideas and attitudes toward the industry that in 1997 had a $5.4-billion impact on Maine. The blunt-spoken Dann Lewis came to the Maine tourism shop in 1995 after a career that included building a resort in the Bahamas, running serveral regional airlines in the Caribbean, serving as chief of tourism in the U. S. Virgin Islands and directing the famous “I Love New York” campaign. In other words, he’s a pro, and he doesn’t hesitate to rain on the parade of tourist-trade optimism that has largely characterized the business in Maine for most of this century.Dann Lewis says thing out loud that most Vacationland booster wouldn’t whisper in their sleep. Maine has actually been losing ground in the vacation sector for years and probably decades, Lewis says. The industry in Maine has been marked by complacency both public and private. Business owners have by and large been reluctant to reinvest in their businesses, to the point where Dann Lewis says there are motels in Maine’s premier tourist towns that he wouldn’t check his dog into. With candor like this, it’s hard to believe that Lewis is a state government employee - and one who seems to be succeeding. Not that Maine tourist businesses have gotten a lot of support from the state in the past. Dann Lewis saves some of his most stinging criticism for state government’s past leadership, or lack of it, in promoting tourism. “It really was not done on a very consistent or professional basis up until just a few years ago,” Lewis says. “There was no plan, no overall vision, and very little funding. Maine consistently ranked nearly dead-last for promotional activity.”It would be easy to dismiss Dann Lewis’s comments as self-serving if they weren’t so undeniable. The King administration first approached Lewis about coming to Maine shortly after the 1994 gubernatorial election. He turned down the offer only to accept it a few months later after learning that the Office of Tourism job would not be business as usual. With King’s support, Dann Lewis says the legislature tripled his budget to $4.5 million - and generated four and five times that investment in new tax revenues from additional tourism. For the first time, the office has set up a professionally managed research-based marketing program with one of the major tourism research firms in North America, Longwoods International. Longwoods has made some surprising discoveries about Maine.

“People in Maine tend to think everyone knows about Maine, and that just is not the case,” Dann Lewis says. “If you compare the perceptions of people who have been to Maine and those who have not, and the differences are night and day. Perceptions of those that have never visited are in some cases really bizarre. They think Maine is very cold, very remote, on the Arctic Circle, with nothing to do, and nothing of historical or cultural interest.”

Dann Lewis has also learned -and can show- that tourism contributes more than $300 million in taxes to the state’s coffers and support the equivalent of 101,000 full-time jobs.

But he also has figures that show “Maine has been steadily losing market share,” Lewis disclosed. “If tourism goes up 10 percent in the Northeast and only 3 percent in Maine, we’re losing ground.” The research indicates that the state has failed to keep up with its neighbors since at least 1994, “although we figure the decline goes back decades,” Lewis notes.

If Dann Lewis has done nothing else, he has shown that it pays to market Maine, with a return on investment renging up to eleven dollars back for every dollar spent on tourism promotion. “Before he arrived, there hadn’t been a good professional report done by an experienced independent market research firm that difinitively showed those kinds of returns,” notes Bob Smith, whose Northeast Hospitality, Inc. bought the old Sebasco Harbor Resort in Phippsburg two years ago. “Once people saw that first report, they were amazed.”

With many of Maine’s bedrock industries, such as forest products steadily losing ground, Dann Lewis seems to be positioning tourism to pick up some of the slack and move up to the top of Maine’s economic ladder.

Given the new candor and new professionalism in Maine tourism, just how successful do Mainers want Dann Lewis to be? Is there such a thing as saturation, too many tourists? How does the state protect the Maine that vacationers come here to see?

Dann Lewis believes that the key to handling more tourists lies in expanding the season rather than expanding facilities. He also has a vision of luring more visitors into interior and northern Maine. “One of our goals is to steer tourism into areas that need economic development.” he explaines. In recent years, tourism growth rates have actually increased in interior Maine, although not always without complaints from coastal communities. “In Bar Harbor where business is flat, the people there wanted me to burn in effigy for promoting inland Maine.”

Dann Lewis appreciates the issues that rising visitor numbers bring, but he expresses confidence that Maine can handle them. “Frankly, we don’t have the infrastructure to allow all those people to come to Maine,” Lewis points out, referring to everything from limited highway capacity to limited arrivals by air.

“Dann has really done a wonderful job with bringing Maine up to speed in the tourism business,” notes Sebasco Harbor Resort’s Bob Smith. “We’re making progress and that has helped.” In the end, Lewis’s willingness to tell the tough truth may be the best thing that has happened to Maine since Mr. Moody built his diner.

from: Down East Magazine - April 1999 by Jeff Clark