Bangor News: Using a photograph of a twentysomething Lycra-clad man climbing the rock face of a mountain to sell a Maine vacation is just wrong, Bob Hastings believes.
Hastings, 57, the CEO of the Rockland-Thomaston Area Chamber of Commerce, has nothing against men in Lycra, or courting them to come and visit Maine. It’s just that there’s other people, with bigger wallets – and maybe bigger waistlines – and more time on their hands, for whom tourist marketing ought to be geared.
“Follow the boomers, follow the bucks,” is how Hastings puts it.
The Rockland-Thomaston Chamber’s Web site – www.therealmaine.com – depicts the midcoast as a place of friendly small villages with vital downtowns featuring nonchain restaurants and shops, galleries and museums.
The “real Maine,” Hastings argues, is a place where couples in their 50s might have breakfast in a downtown diner and hear lobstermen gripe about the fishing in the next booth.
It’s a place where a couple in their 40s on an anniversary weekend can have a nice dinner in a fine restaurant or a drink in an atmospheric pub, then retire to a quiet lakefront cottage a 20-minute drive away.
“We should try to create travelers, not tourists,” with the distinction being that travelers want to become part of a place, not just gawk from the outside.
