George Smith: Vacationland’s love-hate relationship with tourists
By George Smith
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Longtime columnist George Smith, whose work filled this space every Wednesday for three decades, died Feb. 12. For the next several weeks, we will reprint some of George’s best columns. Here’s one from Feb. 1, 2012.
Mainers have always had a love-hate relationship with tourists. We’ve made them the centerpiece of our jokes, derided them as people “from away,” or worse, and even been subject to advertising urging us to be nicer to them.
The ads seemed to have worked. The key tourism survey in 2011 turned up no complaints about us but a few about our roads. We agree!