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Welcome to the Maine Woods Consortium website. The site is a virtual meetinghouse for people and organizations who are working together to bring long term prosperity to Maine's “rim” counties (Franklin, Oxford, Piscataquis, Somerset, Penobscot, Aroostook, and Washington). Click here to view map of region.
The Maine Woods is a region rich in natural and cultural resources but which also faces intense social, economic, and environmental challenges.
The Maine Woods Consortium is an open association of businesses, government agencies, and non-profits focusing and aligning efforts to use our region’s assets in creative and sustainable ways.
If you want to know more, take a moment to explore the menu on the left to find out who drives this effort, what we stand for, and our long term vision for the region.
Note: The Maine Woods Consortium Information Management System is now on line. The system is built to help non-profits, businesses and government agencies share information about their Maine Woods programs and initiatives. To see the system, click on "Directory" in the sidebar to the left. If you are working for an organization or on an initiative that relates to the goals and objectives of the Maine Woods Consortium, we hope you will enter your information in our database for all to see! Maybe you'll find others there who share your interests. And thank you Lucas Sanders of Maine Rural Partners for putting this together for us!
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Tourism Training in the Maine Woods |
Customer Service: Upselling Your Way to a Happier Customer was both the title and the theme of a frontline tourism employee training provided on June 9th at the University of Maine in Farmington, as part of a series of workshops organized through the Maine Woods Tourism Training Initiative (MWTTI).
This particular session provided 17 workers with skills to increase business success by upselling new products and additional services to customers. Led by Greg Gould, Maine Small Business Development Center Director at the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, the workshop clearly made an impact on participants, one of whom left with this simple comment: “Make the time slot longer, he obviously knows his stuff. Fantastic!”
The MWTTI is designed to meet educational needs identified by tourism businesses in Maine’s rim counties by organizing networks of existing tourism training providers to deliver a comprehensive, multi-modal program at the county level. Currently operating in Washington, Franklin and Piscataquis Counties, the initiative is grounded by the work of local training networks comprised of businesses, chambers of commerce, training providers, and other stakeholders. Over the past year, each of these local networks conducted county-level assessments to determine training needs and delivery specifications, and formulated a plan to meet high priority needs.
Between April and June a total of 10 trainings have taken place on topics ranging from service excellence to marketing. Partners this spring have included: business development organizations, community colleges, University of Maine, chambers of commerce, and workforce investment boards.
Project partners are developing strategies to improve and expand the project in the coming year, including work by the Maine Center for Tourism Research and Outreach (CenTRO) to evaluate the project and develop an online database of public and private training resources for businesses.
MWTTI is a part of the Maine Woods Consortium’s effort to improve the overall quality of regional tourism products and increase the number of livable wage jobs in the tourism sector. This project was funded by USDA Rural Development and the Betterment Fund. Click here for more information on the initiative.
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