Politics & Other Mistakes: Why don’t you pay us a visit?

6 mins read
Al Diamon
Al Diamon

I’m not one of those Mainers who hates tourists. Sure, most of them are odious, reptilian blowhards, but that makes it all the more fun to instruct them in the proper way to eat a steamed lobster.

“You have to really careful,” I tell them. “There’s a poison stinger in each claw, so leave those alone. And there’s another one in the tail, so don’t touch that. Just carefully break off the antennas, and dip them in melted butter. Now, suck real hard.
Isn’t that delicious?”

In spite of my little amusement, I’m proud to do my part to soak the tourists for every penny they’ve got. I recognize that these visitors are a vital segment of our economy, supporting more than 94,000 jobs, mostly low-pay, seasonal or part-time scut work.
And if the zombie apocalypse should actually happen, we can eat people from away first.

I’ve heard that dipped in butter, they taste like lobster.

No, my problem with tourism isn’t those obnoxious sacks of sewer sludge driving cars that cost more than my house. My problem is the way we sell this state to them.

According to Maine’s tourism marketing plan developed by high-priced consultants (who, I’m told, also taste like lobster, which isn’t surprising since both are scavengers), we should target our advertising to attract three groups of consumers. These groups are identified by the marketing experts as “balanced achievers,” “genuine originals” and “social sophisticates.” All these rubes appear gullible enough to fall for the poison lobster gag.

Balanced achievers are rich people with families. They like arts and culture, but what they really want out of their vacations is to return home with stories about how they went someplace they’d read about in the New York Times and had a great adventure during which some weird, native Mainer saved them from being stung to death by outlaw lobsters.

Basically, these are your obnoxious in-laws.

Genuine originals are even richer people, who are really bored with their lives, so they engage in all sorts of rugged outdoor activities in a desperate attempt to find meaning in their pointless existences. They’ll pay well to have their photo taken patting a bear cub, harassing a moose or climbing Katahdin during a blizzard, because they’re big into authentic (by which I mean stupid) experiences.

Sort of a cross between Richard Branson and biker gangs in Waco.

Social sophisticates are richer still. Not for them is the funky seafood shack, the rowdy beer hall or the rugged mountain trail. They want luxury and plenty of it. They care not if a concierge and several lobster shuckers had to sacrifice their lives in the preparation of their dinners, so long as they are pampered to excess. Lousy tippers, too.

The Kardashians come to mind.

The tourism office is currently in the second year of a five-year plan designed to attract more of these freakazoids to our state. The cost to taxpayers of getting a Maine visit on the bucket list of every wealthy, self-obsessed jerk on the East Coast comes to $10 million a year. But it’s totally worth it, according to what Carolann Ouellette, director of the Office of Tourism, is reported to have said at the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism in March.

“Segmentation is something really big brands have been doing for a while,” Ouellette told attendees. “To really be able to pick the people we know are highest-value visitors, to be able to get to them more specifically with messages that resonate, is really going to help, honestly, with a better [return on investment] in the long run.”

I thought segmentation had something to do with centipedes. And we already have plenty of those. Although come to think of it, anybody willing to eat something as ugly as a lobster might be convinced to try baked, stuffed centipede in a reduced earwig sauce.
Getting the pests to eat the pests might be worth 10 million bucks.

The truth is the money spent to promote tourism represents another form of corporate welfare. The state is paying for advertising for hotels, restaurants and amusement parks. Proprietors of these businesses will argue that they underwrite this effort through the meals and lodging tax, but that’s false reasoning. We all pay taxes, but those of us who aren’t part of the tourism industry don’t get that money dedicated to covering our personal expenses.

Because if we did, I’d be taking my share in lobsters.

Speedos. Sandals with black socks. Yankees caps. Share your tourist horror stories by emailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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12 Comments

  1. Carolann Ouellette snuck in from California, can’t we do better than Texas re some real border security?

    ………………just asking

  2. The hotels and businesses should pay for the advertising, not the state. I like “flat landers”.

  3. When I was a kid, the old timers would say: Ain’t nuthin wrong with this state that can’t be fixed by a couple hundred pounds of dynamite on that bridge down to Kittery. They were talking about the “old” bridge. The “new” one might require a little more effort.

  4. If Maine truly wants to get a greater share of the tourism market it needs to invest in infrastructure.

  5. I personally know Carolann, and think she is a very nice lady. She can will do good for the tourism in this state with a struggling economy. Al if you dont like it here go some place else.

  6. @James Dunham: Interesting advice. So, if I don’t like even just one aspect of Maine life, I should start packing? That’s a wee bit too categorical for me and – not to put too fine a point on it – for every other Mainer I know. I’ll stick around and continue to shoot my mouth off when someone’s ego needs deflating.

    I’m sure she’s a nice lady. John Baldacci is a nice man but, as governor, he was a dork. Sometimes Maine people get fed up with nice and come to our senses for while, as in 2010.

    By the way, in 2004 quite a few liberals promised to leave the country if GWB was reelected. They all broke their promise. Too bad. If enough had flown, perhaps the result in 2008 would have been reversed.

  7. FrostProof,

    Perhaps they [ liberals] did leave, but came back to vote, or voted in absentia? And if they did, it was a darn good thing. I can’t begin to imagine what the country would be like now with McCain/ Palin running it. After listening to Sarah Palin’s nonsense for the past 8 years, can you imagine what we would have had to put up with with her in the administration?

  8. Let NH fix the bridge.

    In Maine, we “invest” in people not inconsequential things like infrastructure.
    If we double down and “invest” more in people, maybe more people would want to come here.

    Then we can all get a good paying job with benefits providing care, education and life skills training for others. We would need plenty of administrative folks too! Make Maine a place where people don’t want to just visit but make Maine a place where people wan to live and work (or not work).

    Take the entire transportation budget and put it into Funding DHHS and the Education Lobby.

  9. … can you imagine what we would have had to put up with with her in the administration?

    About the same as we’ve had to endure from Tail-gunner Joe Biden.

  10. Also, I’m no fan of McCain at all. He’s a poster-boy for a mandatory Congressional retirement age. But as president he would have been an order of magnitude better than the one we’ve had to endure for 6.5 years.

  11. VP Joe Biden is an exemplar of courage and fortitude.

    If McCain were President, … too awful to contemplate.

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