A Century of Service to Maine's Leisure Travel Industry

Little more than a century ago, Maine's business community faced unprecedented adjustments. World War I had recently ended, leaving in its wake the initial stages of a whole sphere of groundbreaking commercial activities and pursuits in response to an entirely new and different range of public demands. Competition for meeting these changing times was bound to be keen on all fronts, including within the state's emerging tourism industry, even then considered one of the key components of Maine's overall economy. In fact, there were those who viewed prolonged inaction in this latter instance as seriously threatening the state's very future. To that end, in late 1921 the leaders of the Maine Hotel Association and the Maine Automobile Association jointly took what would be one of the most significant steps in the history of the growth and development of the state's leisure travel business. From this impromptu gathering emerged what would officially be called the Maine Publicity Bureau (MPB), to be "a privately supported, state-wide, non-profit, non-partisan organization for the promotion and development of Maine's agricultural, industrial and recreational resources." Its basic purpose would be "to maintain and operate a bureau and offices for the purpose of acquiring and disseminating information concerning the business interests of the State of Maine."The success of the bureau, known since 1999 as the Maine Tourism Association, was immediate, not only because it fulfilled a vital need, but also because it worked constantly at its basic functions, ones that have become more or less standardized over the years, yet which permit a flexibility of operation that allows adjustments to meet present needs.Within the pages of this volume, Peter Dow Bachelder has created a centennial history of the organization that both showcases how and why it came to be in the first place and highlights a succession of its subsequent undertakings and accomplishments.