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Report: '07 may be hard on tourism
By Bangor Daily News Staff
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Bangor Daily News
By Anne Ravana
Bangor Daily News
HALLOWELL - Maine may see more tourists next year because of lower oil prices, but slow nationwide economic growth could limit tourist spending in 2007, according to a report conducted by the Center for Tourism Research and Outreach at the University of Maine.
The report, the first of its kind in Maine, was presented Friday to more than 100 national and state experts, restaurant owners, innkeepers and tourism association representatives at The Outlook for Tourism in Maine: 2007, a conference held at Maple Hill Farm. Charles Colgan, associate director of The Center for Tourism Research and Outreach, prepared the report, which listed oil prices, national and regional economies, weather and Maine Turnpike Traffic as the major indicators of future tourist activity.
"In this time of reduced growth, we have to think, ‘grow the market,'" Colgan said, referring to Maine's need to increase tourism advertising in print and on the Internet. The report used data from the Maine Turnpike Authority, The New England Economic Partnership and Moody's Economy.com. Colgan said Maine Turnpike traffic was up 1 percent from 2005. If oil prices remain low and the economy continues to slowly improve, traffic could increase by 5 percent in 2007, he said. "We are a rubber tire market in Maine. We are fortunate in our geography in that we have a limited number of ways to get here," Colgan said.
"But if oil prices stay where they are through 2007, you could shave turnpike growth by 2 percent." But increased traffic does not necessarily mean increased tourism revenue. Retail sales have been low since 2005, when the nation's economy saw no growth in wages and salaries, Colgan said.
Statewide, restaurants saw a 3.3 percent increase in revenue in 2006 and can hope for a 2.1 percent increase in 2007, Colgan said. Acadia National Park will at best stabilize a declining trend, he said. One way to increase revenue is to encourage overnight lodging, Colgan said. Visitors who stay one or more nights spend more than day-trippers. Weather plays a part in their decision to stay. A mild winter and a sunny summer boosted revenue at hotels and inns by 5 percent this year. But given the economy and the uncertainty of next year's weather, Colgan predicts lodging revenues will slow to a 2.3 percent growth in 2007.
"The economy alone will not produce growth sufficient to overcome the advantage the weather gave us this summer," Colgan said. If it turns out to be a snowy winter, we could see a 1.2 percent increase in turnpike traffic due to skiers, snowmobilers and other winter visitors, he said.
Peter Daigle, CEO of Orono-based Lafayette Hotels, which owns 16 hotels throughout Maine, also spoke at the conference. He said lodging sales in the Bangor area were up 5.9 percent through August, and he expects to see a 2 to 3 percent increase in guests next year. Daigle credits Canadian visitors, the Bangor racino and bus tours for the success of his hotels.
"What we can do more is advertise," Daigle said. "We need to focus on our strengths, advertise our core business." Vaughn Stinson, CEO of Hallowell-based Maine Tourism Association, agreed.
"We have to be able to react to fast decisions. People are deciding last-minute to book something on the internet, and that's where we have to be," Stinson said. Keynote speaker Ed McWilliams, senior vice president of Virginia-based D.K. Shifflet & Associates, a marketing research company, outlined the "4 C's" of tourism post-9-11: control, connection, cost cutting and close-to-home. He said tourists nationwide want traveling to feel safe and affordable and are visiting friends and relatives more than ever.
Many are reluctant to fly, he said, which is one reason Maine should advertise more heavily in New England. Despite being the largest industry in the state, tourism needs help predicting future trends more precisely, Colgan said. The industry still lacks data on where tourists are coming from and how many are Maine residents. The report and conference, sponsored by the Maine Turnpike Authority and L.L. Bean, are important first steps and are expected to be conducted annually, Colgan said.
Bangor Daily News Staff
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Unraveling the mystery of tourism
By Edward D. Murphy
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Portland Press Herald
PULSE
For an industry as large and as important as tourism, Maine has remarkably little information on how it operates.
But that may change over the next few months, as new data should provide a clearer picture of the industry, which pumped $6.2 billion into the state economy in 2004 and supported nearly 180,000 jobs.
"We would hope to confirm people's suspicions and beliefs where it's warranted and, where it isn't, I would expect to challenge the conventional wisdom," said Harold Daniel, director of the Center for Tourism Research and Outreach, which is a joint operation of the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine.
The state doesn't have enough information on why people come to Maine and what they do when they get here, Daniel said. Most of the information the state has on tourism is derived by studying tax receipts -- because lodging and meals are taxed separately and at a higher rate than other sales, it's easy to compile statistics on how much is spent and where.
But tax receipts alone don't provide enough information on what visitors are doing and no sense at all of whether people are enjoying their stays, Daniel said.
This summer, CENTRO began a pilot program at two campgrounds to survey guests about what they did, both at the campground and beyond, and whether they had a good time.
The campgrounds will get a report next month, Daniel said, and the hope is to expand the Web-based survey to other places where visitors stay in the future to provide information to more lodging establishments.
The surveys conducted this summer gathered information on demographics, such as where the visitors came from and their ages. It also asked questions designed to divine personality types and the size and composition of groups of visitors.
CENTRO officials, who are meeting today with an advisory committee to discuss future research plans, also are trying to get deeper information on regional tourism developments. Daniel said the tax data "works well at the state level," but combining it with surveys and information provided by consultants to the state's Office of Tourism will help CENTRO paint a picture of regional tourism that could be used to hone marketing strategies.
Daniel said CENTRO also will be looking at emerging travel trends to help the industry adapt to changing demands.
For instance, he noted that younger visitors are more interested in active vacations than their elders and, even within that group, some are looking for "soft adventures" and others for "hard adventures" in terms of how much activity they want.
More travelers also are taking last-minute vacations, which means they often don't have firm plans on what they will do when they arrive, Daniel said. That means more visitors are looking for hotels, motels and campgrounds with wireless Internet access so they can check out area attractions and decide what they will do the next day.
"Many of those travelers are making it up as they go," he said. "It's the totally unplanned vacation."
Daniel said there are enough fertile areas for research that CENTRO is going to have to pick and choose what it studies, but there's one overriding theme.
"Challenging the conventional wisdom is really what we should be doing to see where tourism in this state is headed," he said.
Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:
emurphy@pressherald.com
UM CenTRO begins work on travel survey
By Bangor Daily News Staff
Thursday, August 24, 2006 - Bangor Daily News
ORONO - The newly formed University of Maine-based Center for Tourism, Research and Outreach, or CenTRO, is developing a customer satisfaction survey for Maine campground visitors to help the state's tourism industry get a comprehensive look at how well it is doing to attract and retain visitor traffic.
CenTRO began a pilot test in July, an e-mail and Web-based questionnaire to be sent to visitors who recently have been at one of several campgrounds participating in the pilot study.
Once the survey questions and research methods are refined, plans are to broaden the field to include as many of the state's campgrounds as possible, according to UM business professor Harold Daniel, director of CenTRO, and Thomas Allen of the department of resource, economics and policy and senior research scientist for CenTRO.
With success in the state's campgrounds, the resulting approach to data collection will become a model for similar research among customers of the entire lodging industry in Maine.
Daniel, Allen and CenTRO staff members are in the process of refining survey questions and methods and developing a process that assures a consistent and objective measure of the quality of experiences of Maine's tourists.
State economists, tourism authorities and owners and managers of campgrounds and lodging establishments are keenly interested in the research. The results will indicate how well visitors' needs are being met and whether they are enjoying their visits enough to return.
The electronic campground survey will be the first in Maine to use e-mail to reach visitors at home in a timely fashion, Daniel and Allen said. Currently, some large hotels and campgrounds use expensive market research firms to gauge customer satisfaction, and some smaller, family owned campgrounds rely on an unscientific postcard questionnaire to get a sense of customer satisfaction.
Any costs that may be associated with the CenTRO surveys, to cover data processing expenses, will be much less than commercial customer surveys, according to Daniel and Allen.
The research, Daniel said of the camper survey, "is intended to give a lot of people insight, from the individual campground operator to the state's policymakers, and those in Maine's tourist regions. Customer satisfaction surveys help measure product quality. The survey helps address the most basic of questions: How are we doing?"
The surveys can become "an ongoing monitoring system to track the quality of visitors' experiences over time," he says.
Richard Abare, executive director of the Maine Campground Owners Association in Lewiston, said the fact that the camper survey is being conducted by the university gives it both credibility and relevance in the eyes of campground owners and the visitors who respond to the surveys.
"The ability to be able to bring this to the individual Maine family owned and operated business is what gets me excited," said Abare. "I know a couple of my campgrounds, my constituents that are in the process of distributing the survey, are very excited about it."
CenTRO also is beginning a second survey that focuses on the experiences, spending habits and other information about overnight visitors that can give campground owners and innkeepers a better idea of who is visiting their establishments, as well as what visitors expect for services and activities during their vacations.
Information is available at www.umaine.edu/centro.
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