Tourism in Connecticut

By Barnett D. Laschever, Director of Tourism, Connecticut Department of Economic Development

In forty-six states, tourism ranks third in total gross earnings. This is not the case in Connecticut. One of the top three industrial states in the nation, Connecticut derives most of its income from manufacturing. The cost of one Trident submarine, manufactured in Groton, for example, is about $2 billion. Tourism brings $2.2 billion to the state's economy.

The figures are deceptive. Tourism's importance lies in the jobs it creates as the tax revenues generated to the state's treasury. In the critical matter of jobs, tourism, employing some 45,000 workers, is among the top seven or eight important economic activities in the state. By comparison, Electric Boat, maker of the Trident, has a work force of 10,000, of which 3,000 are from Rhode Island.

Equally important, seventy percent of the workers in tourism are lesser skilled. This means not everyone has to be a computer scientist, laser expert, or professional to have a job in Connecticut. These lesser skilled persons who are afforded an opportunity to make a livelihood in tourism in Connecticut include minorities, housewives entering the work force for the first time after their children have grown up and left the house, and students whose summer employment in the tourism industry helps pay for today's high cost of education.

Unlike giant industrial complexes such as Electric Boat and United Technologies, tourism is a fragmented industry comprised of many small entrepreneurs. To make their voice heard in the governing bodies of the state, they have banded together the Governor's Vacation Travel Council, a private sector group that acts as an auxiliary arm to the state's tourism promotion office. A project-oriented group, the Council has joined with the state in identifying Connecticut's tourism market and in developing programs designed to increase the state's share of that market.

At present the target market area of Connecticut tourism is megalopolis New York, the 20,000,000 people who live in the five boroughs of New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and Westchester County. Some seventy-five percent of all visitors to Connecticut come from this huge group. The rest come from all parts of America and foreign countries. A relatively small number of tourists come from the other New England states.

Foreign visitors still comprise a small percentage of total visitors. Canadians lead the list, and therefore one of the projects launched by the Governor's Travel Council seeks to educate the tourism industry to accept, with the appropriate discount, Canadian money. Merchants and members of the tourism industry who joined this "Welcome Canadians" program are given stickers for their windows that indicate Canadian money is accepted. A major deterrent to substantially increasing the number of tourists from other foreign countries is the lack of a statewide banking communications system that makes it easy and attractive for merchants to understand how to exchange foreign money for American currency. During periods when the dollar is strong abroad, incoming tourism from Europe drops; when the dollar loses its strength, then the principal overseas group that come to New England are the English and the Germans.

Ironically, tourism in Connecticut accelerated as a result of the two oil crises and the inflation and recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Families in the primary market area which formerly thought nothing of piling the family into a big gas guzzling station wagon heading west, now had second thoughts. They discovered that Connecticut was closer, less expensive and satisfied their needs for rest, relaxation, sightseeing, and fun. As a result, during the past eight years, tourism spending in Connecticut tripled from $650 million a year to $2.2 billion.

To help maintain a continued healthy growth of tourism in Connecticut, the governor and the commissioner of the Department of Economic Development, of which tourism promotion is a division, supported legislation that created something brand new for the state: municipal tourism districts. Under the legislation, contiguous small towns around the state are allowed to band together until they achieve a unit comprised of a total population of 85,000 or more. Funded by a rebate of one and a half percent of the sales tax on accommodations, the districts are promoting their own regions, while the state tourism office continues to promote the state as a whole.

The districts are producing local maps and brochures which are distributed through their own efforts, in the state's highway information centers, at Bradley International Airport, and in a special District booth set aside by the state in the Connecticut Building of the Big E, the tenth largest fair in the country, with an annual attendance in excess of 1,000,000 people.

In addition to selling the state to other Americans and to persons of other countries, the tourism office works to encourage Connecticut residents to vacation in their own state with guides, maps, calendars of events, and press stories. Inasmuch as Connecticut has no national parks or forests, residents are encouraged to enjoy the facilities available in a large network of state parks and forests. Such attractions as Mystic Seaport, the Mystic Aquarium, the Mark Twain Memorial, the shore, the upland woods, and lakes also are being enjoyed by more and more state residents.

It is not necessary to travel to West Point when one can see cadets on parade at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London; for natural history, the Peabody at Yale is closer with exhibits that compare with many of those in the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

The American Revolution comes alive in field trips to Old New-Gate Prison, Washington's official prison for Tories and British prisoners of war in a visit to Fort Griswold; and to numerous other Revolutionary War sites.

Although the warm-weather months draw the most visitors, Connecticut truly is a four-season state. Summer is followed by the brilliant pyrotechnic display of the fall foliage. In winter there are five downhill ski areas and forty-five cross-country areas. Spring is gay with its flowers and floral festivals.

* Entry under revision.