Bringing the right kind of tourists to Maine

Those who seek more tourists for Maine must be careful, lest their dream come true. Yes, there can be too much of a good thing.

In the 1950s, the small Spanish town of Benidorm attracted almost no tourists. With no hotels, roads or running water, its golden sand beach was deserted, its spectacular bay unseen by the multitudes.

Mayor Pedro Zaragoza Orts, with a sense of timing that was historic, thought his local economy could be boosted by a new development: the packaged vacation. He encountered many obstacles, including threatened excommunication by the archbishop after he signed a municipal order authorizing the wearing of bikinis.

Only the friendship and intervention of President Francisco Franco kept Zaragoza a Catholic. And his plan to build the local economy on the bikini took off when Franco's wife started "summering" in Benidorm, staying at the mayor's house.

Picture this: 1950, 2,700 residents. Drinking water sold house-to-house by a man on a mule that dragged a large cask on wheels. Waste carried out of the houses and tossed into the sea or onto the land. No electricity.

Benidorm was a small village of farmers and fishermen and a landscape of olive, lemon and citrus trees.

Skip ahead to today. A skyline dominated by high-rise hotels, what one tourism writer calls "so many tourist canisters, filled up, flushed out and filled up again, week in, week out. It is an efficient system."

Along the beach sits one of Europe's tallest buildings, the Hotel Bali, 610 feet high with 52 floors.

The number of residents tops 64,000, serving a staggering 5 million visitors per year. 38,000 hotel rooms. 330 skyscrapers. 600 bars.

Cheers! Could this be the paradise that the young Mayor Zaragoza envisioned? One can only hope not.

As the state of Maine ratchets up promotional campaigns to bring more tourists to our uncrowded state, perhaps we should pause for a moment to contemplate the impact of these fine folks on our lives.

It's a good time to have this discussion because ... well, because these friends from away are here right now, so you can easily measure their impact on yourself -- and because since 2000, according to Dan Lewis, the state's tourism director, "overall visitor expenditures are up, but the actual number of tourists visiting the state has remained relatively static."

Tourism spending rose just 1 percent from 2000 to 2005, and day trips were flat while overnight trips actually declined.

So we are certainly not suffering too much of a good thing right now. But that possibility exists, and the impacts of tourism ought to be part of any debate focusing on how to bring more tourists -- with money -- to our state.

Please rest assured that I am not suggesting we ban bikinis. That would put Old Orchard Beach out of business.

The smartest approach would be to target the biggest spenders, so that we minimize the number of tourists necessary to achieve the maximum economic benefit. Here are two groups of visitors I'd encourage.

Looking around Mount Vernon, I see lots of nonresidents who spend their summers here -- mostly on our lakes. These folks fill up our churches in the summer, sustain our local café, donate significant sums to our library, and expand our own experiences by telling us of theirs. We have some great summer people out here in Mount Vernon.

A comprehensive campaign to lure more summer residents would be wise. They invest in property, pay a substantial portion of our local property taxes, drive our economy, enrich our summer lives, and leave the state to the rest of us for eight to ten months of the year.

Those who complain about their impact and presence just don't get it. If we're going to retain Maine's traditional tourist economy, these are exactly the folks we need.

The second group I'd encourage is anglers. Fishing across the U.S. and Canada, I've encountered lots of anglers spending big bucks to catch big fish -- and keeping none of them. Minimal impact. Maximum spending.

Investments in fisheries, with better marketing, can capture much more of this tourist segment, with only a positive impact on the environment. And we get to catch the same fish!

Too many tourists can definitely be too much of a good thing. The least important tourist, in my mind, is the backpacker wilderness-seeker granola-eater who spends almost nothing here but demands that we place a lot of land off-limits to suit their fine sense of the environment and protect their experience. Send them to Spain.

George Smith is the executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine. He lives in Mount Vernon and can be reached at george@samcef.org.

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