View From Afar S1, E20: IPW 2025 | Carolann Ouellette, President of the Maine Office of Tourism

I’m Billie Cohen, Afar’s editorial director, and welcome to View From Afar, a podcast that spotlights the people and ideas shaping the future of travel. And in this special series, I’m coming to you live from the floor of IPW, the annual travel conference organized by the U.S. Travel Association to share the best of America with the rest of the world.

In this episode, I’m talking with Carolann Ouellette, the Director of the Maine Office of Tourism. Carolann is so committed to Maine tourism that she’s held this role twice. First from 2010 to 2016, during which time Maine benefited from multiple years of consistent growth in tourism. Then she came back to the job again just recently, in June 2024.

In between, she was executive director of Maine Huts & Trails, a nonprofit that maintains and promotes the backcountry, and then she created and ran the state’s Department of Outdoor Recreation with the goal of growing an outdoor recreation tourism industry for the state. And she did it: Outdoor recreation now makes up 3.7 percent of Maine’s economy.

It’s not surprising that Carolann has a love of travel. It’s in her blood. Her father was a pilot for PanAm. And when she graduated from Cornell’s hotel management school, she followed his lead and worked as a flight attendant for the airline, and then as a river rafting guide in Maine, and later ran her own restaurant, as she evolved into the leader she is today. We’re looking forward to hearing what’s next for Maine—and Carolann’s next big idea.

Welcome, Carolann!

Transcript

Billie: Welcome, Carolann. It’s really nice to have you here.

Carolann: Thank you so much. I’m really excited to be part of this.

Billie: So I read that your dad was a pilot for Pan Am. What kind of impact did that have on you? Did you travel a lot?

Carolann: Oh my gosh. I had the most wonderful opportunities as a child all the way through. So yeah, my dad was a pilot for Pan Am, then Delta, and then when he retired he worked for Hawaiian Airlines in operations. So we traveled our entire youth. In fact, my first passport, this is how old I am, had my sister and me both on the single passport as young, young children or young child and an infant. But yeah, we were able to explore the world with my father, either meeting him on trips or just doing vacations with him. So very fortunate and I am sure that’s what inspired the travel bug in me and my passion for travel and tourism.

Billie: And then, so you also went to work in the travel industry way, way before you joined, you know, the Main Office of Tourism, right?

Carolann: I did! One of the things I actually wanted to be was a pilot. I didn’t quite get there in the commercial sense. I did get a private pilot’s license many moons ago. But I thought, OK, I’ll jump in as a flight attendant and applied to Pan Am, oh my gosh, many, many years ago. So it would’ve been in the ’80s. Not long after college. And yeah, I was based at Kennedy Airport. So again, got to do some really fun trips, mostly when I was on reserve. You didn’t get the nice big trips until you had a lot of seniority, so makes sense. I was doing a lot of bopping around the U.S. and a lot of turnarounds, but that’s OK. I love being on an airplane.

Billie: Oh, that’s so great. What do you love about it? Remind us all what, what, what you love about flying these days, when it can be such a hassle.

Carolann: I think it’s just the notion of being on a journey. I mean, even if it’s short, even if it’s for work, if it’s for friends and family, I mean, obviously if it’s for vacation, it’s probably even more exciting, but it is that notion of just moving to the next thing and the next experience.

Billie: It’s so kind, it’s so magical and it still blows my mind every time. Like this giant piece of machinery gets us in the air and gets us where we’re going.

Carolann: And I think that’s the fascination with it when I really think through it to the actual aerodynamics and the reasons behind being up there and that big thing. And just the skill, again, having grown up in a family with a pilot, just the skill levels of the folks who are on board and operating it. The whole thing fascinates me with airlines, logistics, the operations, the scheduling, like how all that is managed is just crazy to me, but wonderful.

Billie: You know something about logistics and operations now in your role. What did you learn from those past experiences as a flight attendant or from your dad that you use in your job today?

Carolanne: That’s such an interesting question. I think there are a few things. You learn that there’s got to be sort of procedures and strategies and ways to do things, but you’ve got to be able to react to different situations at any moment and any time. So that flexibility and that sort of nimbleness of understanding that things can turn around or change and you’ve got to adapt and adjust.

And I think in today’s world, particularly in the marketing world, so many things are from a data perspective available to you. And then the ability to change strategy, change direction, do what you need to do is fascinating to me also. But yeah, certainly the inner relationship of all the parts and pieces of it too.

Billie: But you clearly liked it because you had the role—do I have this right?— 2010 to 2016 and then you left for some other projects that we’ll get to, but then you came back. So, why’d you come back? What did, what was unfinished? What did you want to do?

Carolann: I was very fortunate in the 2010 to 2016 time frame, and I had been at the office prior to that, in another role, that I left learning a lot in a really good place. But I watched a lot of the, I think just changes in the industry. And of course we went through the pandemic and a whole bunch of other things during that time frame when I wasn’t there. But I think I saw a renewed opportunity looking at our industry and the things that they were doing on the ground.

And I think that’s one of my biggest opportunities and challenges is there’s so many new people in Maine developing new product, new experiences. There’s so many parts and pieces I haven’t discovered, but I started seeing them and I’m like, oh, we’ve got to get more of this out there.

Billie: Can you think of a specific example?

Carolann: I think more than anything, number one, we had a lot of investment in hotel properties and particularly boutique hotels. So a lot of independent operators taking historic properties, so we also had some really positive changes in our historic tax credits in the state. So looking at historic mill properties, looking at unique homes, large-scale mansions that have been turned into these properties. Just experiences on the ground in outdoor recreation. And those making outdoor products were really interesting to me in tying those together.

We’ve got a woman, DoryWoman Rowing, who’s doing rowing experiences in Belfast in a Swampscott dory. Packraft Maine, he’s doing bike and rafting experiences so you don’t have to use a car. You can pack the raft on your bike and the bike on your raft. So there’s just some fun unique things like that that are cropping up and for us more recently working with our tribal nations on supporting Wabanaki cultural tourism plans, too.

The Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument has been working with the Wabanaki people, so our tribal nations across the state of Maine, to open a contact station, which is not technically a visitor center, but it’s a unique place where the story is being told and years of history and current products, past products, anything sort of artisanal to the tribes is being showcased. And it opens this summer and it’s at the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. So a lot of new things.

Billie: A lot of cool new things. And so you mentioned outdoor activity, so I want to talk about that because in between your two stints, as director of the Office of Tourism, you launched a completely new department for Maine. Can you tell us about it?

Carolann: Sure. So again, another fun chance to do something a little bit different. The Office of Outdoor Recreation was launched really at the push of a new trade association called Maine Outdoor Brands. And they’re a business alliance of outdoor product manufacturers, retailers, and experience providers. So outfitters. And they had been to a show called Outdoor Retailer and saw the first eight states that had created offices sign an accords agreement, confluence of states, and sort of pillars of how they would operate, you know, balancing conservation and economic development, you know, the outdoor recreation economy.

Billie: When was all this happening?

Carolann: This was in 2017, I believe. Utah was the first state to create an Office of Outdoor Recreation in 2010. And then the other seven states followed suit very quickly. So Colorado was second, Montana, Oregon, Vermont. So the idea behind the Office of Outdoor Recreation was really to elevate the outdoor recreation economy as a strong pillar of the state’s economy overall, but looking at that blending of that product, manufacturing, the retail, and the experiences.

So it was focused a lot more, not on visitation and marketing, but more on community and how we could continue to help communities invest in their asset base as a way to attract and retain talent, as a way to attract new businesses. And then also how did we help those small businesses that were kind of inside that outdoor recreation economy continue to grow? And also tying together departments across state government, so our natural resource agencies, tying them better to the work at economic development and at the office of tourism.

So we were kind of this middle point of bringing the industry together and then developing a number of public-private partnerships.

Billie: What does the Department of Outdoor Recreation do?

Carolann: It’s actually only an office. We’re in the Department of Economic and Community Development, which is also where the Office of Tourism is housed. So yes, the Office of Outdoor Recreation works with the Office of Tourism on the travel and tourism side of it. So making sure that new experiences, existing experiences, communities that are really grounded in that outdoor recreation experience are all well-known inside the travel space too.

But it also works to connect the product manufacturers often to large-scale retailers. So a lot of B2B, just like we’re doing here at IPW, so connecting buyers and sellers, but more of product in the sense of physical product to large retailers across the country. So things like outdoor retailers, Switchback, different shows where you still have that B2B component; we’ve been very supportive of making those connections, working with universities and community colleges and even at the high school level, at the technical education level, helping build out outdoor skills programming and outdoor business development degree programs, you know, working with folks to identify those more so that Maine becomes a place where you go to school or college to learn more about becoming someone in that outdoor recreation economy sphere.

Billie: Feed that cycle and keeps it going.

Carolann: Yeah, I mean, University of Maine, Farmington, for instance, has got a great outdoor recreation business administration program. It started as an alpine operations program, so helping folks figure out how to be ski resort operators.

So really it was about making those connections where they hadn’t been made before. So with the university, with Maine outdoor brands, with Maine Marine Trades Association, Maine Technology Institutes, and the Bureau of Parks and Lands, those core groups recently launched an outdoor recreation economy road map. So 10 years looking out, where do we want to be, how does this work, how does this continue to help Maine grow and help elevate the industry?

Billie: It sounds like your skill and the jobs that you’ve been taking you is that you’re able to identify where those opportunities for connection are, and then making them happen, turning them into something concrete. From what you learned from working on the outdoor recreation department, how are you translating that now to the Office of Tourism?

Carolann: I learned so much in the eight years that I did that work because I was by myself. I was a single-person office. So you were totally dependent upon partnerships and collaborative opportunities. And I think it’s really expanded my vision or, you know, just expanded my world of who’s out there and who could become partners, maybe less traditional than we’ve thought of in the tourism industry before.

I think about like a group we have in Maine called Teens to Trails, and it’s getting kids into the outdoors, and part of our destination management plan is to be more collaborative with communities and, you know, dig a little bit deeper, again, that balancing of resident quality of life and visitor experience. I think it’s helped make me think outside the box a little bit more as to who could be a partner and who has an experience that maybe has been considered community/ local, that could actually be something that a visitor might want to do, and how do we make that transition? So yeah, different partnerships, I think, has been the biggest piece.

Billie: I like that. I had a question on here, which is, what is your next big idea? But your next big idea is going small.

Carolann: I mean having a lot of big experiences are critical to continuing to grow tourism in Maine, but where those kind of really interesting nuggets, and we hear it here at IPW in particular, like what are those unique experiences that are more personalized that, you know, the general everyone else might not get that we can sell.

So how to find those and make sure that the fit’s right. We’re doing some work with Planet Terra right now in our main downtown center that runs the Main Street programs on these really small community tourism projects. Again, that same type of idea. How do you find something where you’re really having impact at a very local level?

Billie: And how do you answer that question when you’re asked?

Carolann: You know, Maine’s a really small state from a population standpoint, so we always say it’s like less than half a degree of separation from who you know and who you can find that knows someone else that knows you.

So we try to do that, being conscious that we are a small team, but, one thing we heard as we’ve been doing a reset on our management plan is you guys have the ability as an office of tourism to really get like-minded, but disparate groups together in a room. And we value that in the work that you can do, keeping in mind that we still have to get out there and do the marketing and make sure we’re doing our primary purpose. But I think that’s been really important in building that community, literally that community connection.

Billie: Yeah. So let’s talk about what is next for Maine. Obviously for the whole country, we’ve got America 250 coming up, lots of events. What are you most excited about happening in Maine in 2025 or 2026?

Carolann: Oh, there’s a lot. For America’s 250 though, I think Maine has taken a really unique approach. And actually the organizational capacity of it is sitting in our Secretary of State’s office, but there’s a whole commission dedicated to it. But the idea behind how Maine’s approaching it is basically gathering stories about people, place objects, language, and looking at putting together the Maine Atlas, which will be 250 of these things, these stories that have helped define where Maine has fit into America’s 250 years.

Billie: Wow. Carolann: So it’s, again, getting down into the community level, and there’s a team working on this that’s really dedicated to finding those stories and they’d love them from locals and visitors alike. So there’s actually a nominate your story or your place or your thing or experience on the Maine Atlas Project website. So that’s exciting.

And then the other things for us, we just got our first United Soccer League soccer team in Maine. So Portland is now home to the Hearts of Pine.

Billie: Oh, cool.

Carolann: Which is fun considering that we’re on the heels of FIFA, you know, being in the U.S., and so that rounds out our sports kind of team place, and Portland actually was just identified as one of the best small cities for sports, which is really fun because it’s always been identified as one of the best small cities for food.

So now we’ve got this, hockey, basketball, baseball, and soccer round-out of the teams. But the Hearts of Pine team is, we’re doing a marketing partnership with them simply because soccer has such a diverse audience and such a young fan base and such a growing fan base.

And for us, it’s been important moving forward to grow tourism, to diversify those of the folks demographically and geographically and every other way you can think of to really help build the base for the future.

Billie: What is your vision like, what is your dream for what’s next with Maine Tourism?

Carolann: Really for me, it’s continuing to build the relationships with our industry and our communities in Maine. So, you know, I think coming off the pandemic, there was a lot of change, right? A lot of things shifted. But for us, you know, that’s passed now, thankfully, and we really want to be able to stay as current with what’s happening on the ground. So how do we really engage number one, and help the industry get what they need? And then make sure that we know enough of what’s going on so we can really market well.

We did what we call a brand refresh recently and really focused on this notion of Forged by Nature as our brand platform and understanding. And this has been a little bit of my vision with some help from some colleagues inside the state, but this notion that there isn’t sort of this separate piece of outdoor recreation or arts and culture or food, that it’s been, that landscape that has inspired all of it. The land and the sea and the state in which we live and experience in our everyday lives inspire what we do in the outdoors and those experiences we share, that also inspires the artisans and the crafters. So it’s all sort of tied together in this circle. Yeah. So I think we’ve really been trying to shift more to that storytelling aspect of how where we live is all of that, right? It’s not this, that, or that. It’s all tied together.

Billie: Yeah. It’s forged by nature, whether you’re in the woods or you’re in a restaurant or in an art gallery.

Carolann: Exactly.

Thanks for joining this episode of View From Afar. In the show notes, you’ll find links to the topics we discussed, the Maine Office of Tourism website and social handles, as well as our recent coverage of Maine. And be sure to follow along this week to hear more interviews with travel industry experts.

You can find more Views From Afar on afar.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We’re @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great interviews. Subscribing always makes that easy. And be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platforms. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been View From Afar, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland, with assistance from Michelle Baran and Billie Cohen. Music composition from Epidemic Sound. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.