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On May 9, 2002, The State of New York celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the world-renowned “I Love New York” tourism campaign at a gala honoring Dann Lewis’s boss, John Dyson, at a reception and dinner at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

A Brief History of I Love New York:

In 1975, New York State was in the midst of a severe economic recession when Governor Hugh Carey took Office.  John Dyson was appointed to serve as the New York State Commerce Commissioner, and it was determined that tourism would be the primary vehicle to reverse the state’s economic woes. During John’s tenure, the “I Love New York” advertising campaign and logo were created. Also during John’s tenure, Dann Lewis was hired as his Deputy Commissioner and Director of Tourism Development to build the infrastructure upon which a world-class advertising campaign generating millions of inquiries, could be dramatically converted into visitors to New York City and State. The esteemed Milton Glaser was commissioned to produce the branded logo, and Steve Karmen composed the music that would become a powerful statement of support for tourism. The birth of I Love New York has increased toruism and resulted in millions of jobs since 1975, and 25 years later it was still going strong.

Where Dann Lewis Fits In:

Dann Lewis took over and reorganized the tourism staff from a purely public and media relations focus, to an integrated tourism promotion organization that was to develop appropriate collateral materials to complement the phenomenally successful ad campaign, together with a responsive fulfillment operation and call center. Dann developed and implemented national and international trade, press and consumer promotions in partnership with private and public entities such as major hotels and attractions, airlines, the New York League of Theatre Owners, Radio City Music Hall, the Regional Tourism entities in upstate New York and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Major promotional events invariably resulted in extensive newspaper, television and radio coverage that extended the overall effectiveness and world-wide reach which came to characterize “I Love New York” as the most visible tourism campaign in history. To this day, Dann Lewis is credited with having a pivotal role to play in tourism’s key role in New York State economic development.

When Dann Lewis first gazed on Northern Eleuthera’s conglomerate of sea grape, coral reefs and pink sand beaches, he was about to graduate from Dartmouth College and attend MIT graduate school. 18 months later, he instead became one of the youngest overseas investors ever to come to the Bahamas, and formed a new company called Current Development Ltd. Dann would spend the next two years building a resort of 22 duplex-type beach homes known as Current Club, with a marina, fueling dock, and water and power facilities for visiting yachtsman. Local Bahamians will both build and staff the new resort property.

A half hour trip by plane from Nassau, Eleuthera (from the Greek word “eleutheros” meaning “free”) posed some interesting challenges. The 25-acre parcel of land that would become Current Club had magnificent beach frontages on the north and south sides of the island with good anchorages for boats and ideal swimming conditions…but there was no electricity available. To build a resort, one must have electrical power. Dann Lewis quickly realized that he needed to build an electrical generating plant, but was understandably a tad overwhelmed at how such a plant gets built. So he read a “How to Build an Electrical Generating Plant” book, and proceeded to build one.

To this very day Dann Lewis sleeps with a pillow over his head, not under. Every time that electrical generating plant hiccupped, sputtered and stopped humming, Dann would have to drop what he was doing or if “asleep”, get up and go fix it.

The next major hurdle was facilitated by frustration in getting supplies in a timely manner from Nassau or Miami. Virtually everything had to arrive in Eleuthera by slow-boat or by air, and the infrastructure supporting these two modes was very much a product of island mentality. (Read: Don’t Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk) Dann quickly realized that he needed to buy an airplane, but was understandably a tad slowed down by the notion that he did not know how to fly an airplane. So he read a “How to Fly an Airplane” book, bought an airplane in Miami and flew it (over-water) to the Bahamas, without the obvious benefit of formal flying lessons.

To this very day Dann Lewis……..never-mind.

By: Sherry Lewis, April 21, 2008

From Eleuthera, Bahamas: One sunny Saturday shortly after lunch, I decided to catch up on some paperwork in the Current Club office rather than go sailing. I was expecting a good friend from the States to arrive in his private plane that day, so was monitoring our air-to-ground radio while trying to balance the checkbook and ignore the squeals of laughter coming from guests languishing on the beach outside my office window. Several passing aircraft called in to see if we had rooms for them later in the week on their return from Exuma, and finally I heard my buddy calling in to say he was en route from Nassau to the North Eleuthera airstrip, and would make a low pass in front of the Current Club on his way in.

A few minutes later he called in again and I noticed a distinct change in his voice – “Uh, Dann, I’m having a bit of a problem — my engine is acting up and I’m not sure I can make it to the airport!” “Where are you?” I asked, while waving at our Dock-master who had just come in the door. “I’m about ten miles south of the Club, just off Current Island,” he replied. “I’m going to have to ditch – I’ll try for the shallow sand bar in front of the Clubhouse in about five minutes,” his voice faltering. “We’ll be standing by in the Boston Whaler,” I said. “Good luck”.

“Billy, get the Whaler started, I’ll be out in a minute.” Knowing my old friend well, I though he’d be able to accomplish a successful ditching with the landing gear up in his single-engine plane, but my heart rate was climbing and I knew his must be too! I stopped at the bar and grabbed a tumbler of his favorite beverage, Wild Turkey Bourbon, and ran out to meet Billy in our Whaler.

The sea was flat calm, and as we headed down the channel to round the sandbar, we saw the plane gliding towards us. The engine sputtered to a dead stop and after a perfect splash down, we came up behind the left wing as the plane slowed to a stop and slowly began to settle. The door popped open and my friend climbed onto the wing, shoes in one hand and briefcase in the other. He stepped into the Whaler, feet hardly wet, and gratefully sipped on his Wild Turkey as we backed off and watched the plane sink to the bottom in eight feet of crystal clear water.

I looked at my buddy with admiration and commented “I knew you said you’d drop in this weekend, but I had no idea you’d be in such a hurry to get here…”

Believe it or not, that plane was hauled out of the water, pulled up next to the Current Club bar, re-built much to the pleasure and amazement of my guests, and eventually towed to the airport where it flew away!

By: Dann Lewis, May 23, 2008

The $100,000 TV campaign drew roughly 2,500 calls for information on Maine vacation spots.

Janice Fortin had already planned a vacation in New Hampshire when she saw an ad on television showcasing Maine’s beauty. She called the 800 number for more information and is now putting together a camping trip to Maine for later this summer. “It did its job,” Fortin said of the advertising.

Maine tourism officials readily admit that the state lags behind many others in tourism promotion. They believe the lack of money for marketing is to blame for the slow growth of the state’s tourism industry in the ’90’s.

“Maine is 25 to 30 years behind the rest of the country into getting into this business,” said Dann Lewis, the state’s director of tourism. “We’ve relied on the drive market for so long that Maine has not had the kind of growth other states have had.” Dann Lewis said the state needs to break out of a rut of modest spending increases of the last few years and be more aggressive in attracting tourists and their money - and to decrease Maine’s reliance on drive-ins.

Dann Lewis’s 1997-98 budget was more than doubled, to $3.8 million for the first year of a five-year plan to bolster the state’s tourism industry. The five Maine television ads that ran for a month beginning in late May represent a key part of the new strategy that may be expanded next year if the early promising results hold up. The ads ran on stations in Boston, Providence and Hartford, and ran regionally on the Arts and Entertainment and Discovery cable channels. They also ran for two weeks in Montreal.

“We’re going after people who were probably thinking of going to Colorado, West Virginia or the white Mountains”, Dann Lewis said.

From: Portland Press Herald, July 6, 1977 by Edward D. Murphy

Dann H. Lewis, director of the office of tourism, has been selected as one of the most extraordinary sales and marketing minds in hospitality, travel and tourism by senior executives in those industries from around the world.

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

Riding on the momentum of their highly successful 1997 season, the Department of Community and Economic Development’s Commissioner, Tom McBrierty and State Tourism Director Dann Lewis cruised into the legislature on December 7. Testifying before the Joint Committee on Business and Economic Development, they requested a special $3 million appropriation to market Vacationland to the rest of the world. This special request is $1.2 million more than last years appropriation, and would bring Tourism’s war chest in 1998 to $5.4 million, up from $4.2 million in 1997.

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

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 comint 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

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