The hard challenge of luring visitors to Conn.

The folks at the American Mural Project in Winsted, Connecticut’s newest attraction, made certain to contact the state tourism office ahead of their opening last weekend, the culmination of 20 years of work creating the world’s largest indoor art collaboration.

They knew it was crucial to join the hundreds of museums, recreation purveyors, eateries, historic sites, wineries, performance venues and assorted other places of interest on www.ctvisit.com. And the timing was perfect: The state Office of Tourism recently launched its $3 million summertime campaign, dubbed “Find your vibe.”

Sweetening the state’s tourism promotion, AMP, as the mural project is known, was able to join the state’s second annual “CT Summer at the Museum” program — free admission for kids 18 and under, with a free pass for one adult thrown in.

The listing went live as planned, exactly as the American Mural Project opened.

“We’re really excited about a number of initiatives that the state is doing,” AMP executive director Amy Wynn told me Wednesday. “We consider it a partnership. We promote them, they promote us.”

It is, in some ways, state government at its best — spending a few million dollars in a centralized, well honed effort to advance billions of dollars in spending at private attractions that define Connecticut. That’s an improvement over years past when Connecticut had more than a dozen independent tourism districts and, for an embarrassing moment two governors ago, abandoned tourism promotion altogether.

The question is, can one tourism office, one website, one campaign, match visitors of all sorts with an endless web of attractions?

We’re talking about everything from traditional majors like the Mystic Aquarium and the Native American casinos to sleepy house museums, live theater, river rafting and newbie venues such as the American Mural Project. All but a lucky few of them may rightly say they’re lost in the din, or that the state isn’t targeting their audience.

It’s a tall challenge all the more difficult because we have multiple targets — day-trippers from New York and New England? Week-long vacationers to the shoreline? People visiting friends and relatives here, who may have a day or two free? Yes, yes and yes.

Mostly, it’s us. The last big study in 2017 showed $15 billion in tourism and related spending, generating $2.2 billion in tax revenues and supporting 123,500 jobs. Obviously, the bulk of that is local residents hitting restaurants, theaters and all the rest. For my money, a tourism campaign first and foremost must make us feel good about where we live.

At the center of all this is Noelle Stevenson, executive director of the tourism office. She’s a can-do optimist — are there other types in tourism? — who arrived late last year from high-profile tourism posts in Florida, where attracting visitors falls somewhere in importance between eating and breathing.

Stevenson wants to change the image of Connecticut as a “drive-by state.”

“Connecticut may be a small state but it’s a pretty big state when it comes to tourism assets,” she said. “If we continue to be the drive-by state, maybe we need to tell our story from a different angle.”

That means widening the message about more attractions by collaborating with more of them. “What we do as a tourism office is to ensure that people are aware of what we have in our state, all of our offerings, and that’s the key here,” she said.

Seems like a tough balancing act to me. For example, if you go on the CTVisit home page and click on “37 things to do in Connecticut this June,” the first category is “Active Adventure” and the first item is a 10-mile rafting trip on the Housatonic River, followed by ziplining, paddle boarding, boat rentals and the like. That’s all fantastic but it doesn’t speak to what makes the place unique.

“How would I know this is Connecticut?” asked one person long affiliated with attractions in the state.

On the other hand, if the campaign stuck to promoting the same list of two dozen top attractions, great as they are, the state might look older and stuck in our ways — not the image of excitement we want to project.

Spending on tourism marketing in Connecticut over the last decade, under the state Department of

Economic and Community Development, averaged $11.5 million a year in the first term of former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, fiscal years 2012 to 2015, in part to make up for years of neglect. It has settled down to a base of $4.3 million a year under Gov. Ned Lamont but the last couple of years have seen an extra $15 million, some of that from federal pandemic relief.

It’s a good problem to have, too many attractions, but it’s still a challenge. American Mural Project, a unique showcase that celebrates workers with unified art linked to specific stories, did make it into CTVisit.com, which is designed for easy use as a sortable database. But you’d have to know to look for it. AMP didn’t make some of the curated lists and it wasn’t named among the museums.

“I feel like I have to learn more about how CTVisit works, being new to the table,” said Wynn, the executive director, who previously was the founding director of the Northwest Connecticut Arts Council. “We have to be active and reach out to them and learn about how to help them help us.”

Stevenson rejects the idea that promoting the state is a trade-off, a set of compromises. She says the campaign can do it all. And she’s working to shake things up with new ideas.

Just this week, for example, my colleague Alex Soule reported on a state effort to reach mobile professionals who can work from anywhere, to persuade them to rent quarters for extended stays here, while working, to check out the state. Hey, it works for Tuscany.

To me, Connecticut at its best is a bit like Portugal — tiny in area, big on food and densely packed with stuff including a shoreline. OK, we don’t have oceans or medieval fortresses unless you count Gillette Castle, but the point is, there’s a lot to talk about here.

We will never be known as a destination with a marquee lure like Yellowstone National Park, the Pacific Coast Highway, South Beach, Broadway or the streets of San Francisco. We can improve our own self-image and if the “Find Your Vibe” campaign does nothing else, it will be a success.

“You are the face of your destination,” Stevenson said, “and that in itself dominoes out to those that get curious about coming here. If we are not happy then we cannot possibly project that.”