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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 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.

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

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

It was raining. But this was a big night for the New York Division of Tourism and an even bigger night for Broadway. You had major big stars shooting for union scale wages. You had chorus lines waiving residuals. You had Peter Pan’s Sandy Duncan being hoisted into the darkening night-lit sky. You also had Captain Hook, Nana-the-dog, Wendy Dear and the Darling Boys. Last but hardly least, you had the folks from Wells, Rich, Greene Advertising and Dann Lewis, the tweed-jacketed Director of the Division of Tourism (who was paying for this shebang).

There was a lot riding on this thing. The League of New York Theatres and Producers calculate that the “I Love New York” commercials have sold a cool 1.8 million theatre tickets, and the Department of Commerce figures a booming 126 million in revenue has been brought into this state since the campaign began. New York needs that revenue after the huge slump of ‘75.

So the rain was being ignored.

Sandy Duncan Loves New York.

And Lucie Arnaz Loves New York

And Angela Landsbury Loves New York

And Oh Yes, Beverly Sills, who will kick off this Broadway-packed, 60 second commercial when it hits the air on November 17th, Loves New York.

On this campaign alone, five shows are being covered: Sweeney Todd was shot was shot down by South Street Seaport, Dancin was shot on the steps of the Plaza Fountain, They’re Playing Our Song was filmed on a flatbed truck in the middle of Times Square, Evita was shot on the steps of the New York Public Library and of course Peter Pan. Everyone belting out “I Love New York” at the top of their lungs.

Suddenly Steve Horn (the best cameraman-director in the business) says “God, the Twin Towers are getting covered with fog.” The Twin Towers are lit up. So, for that matter, is the entire east side of lower Manhattan. A woman from the Division of Tourism saw to that. She called the Building Owners and Maintenance Association and asked if they’d leave the lights on in their east side offices to form the background for the new “I Love New York” commercial. They said “sure”.

In a funny litttle gesture of excitement Sandy Duncan crosses her arms in front of her chest, flings them wide again and as she is hoisted high above the Brooklyn Bridge says “There’s something in the air!” She throws back her head and laughs the enchanted laugh of a little boy who will never grow up, and we are all, for a split second, young again.

It’s a wrap and Dann Lewis is beaming.

From: Playbill - September 1979