Washington had a big idea a couple of years ago to rake in tourists and pump up the economy with a slogan: "Say WA." Which had many people saying "Wha ... ?"

Not surprisingly, it fell under a hail of sarcasm and left more than a few people scratching their heads. The misguided attempt to promote the state worked in reverse, drawing derision from local and even national media. Keith Olbermann, the acerbic host of MSNBC's Countdown, blasted it: "Developing the idea took 18 months, involved a 32-member brand development task force with a budget of almost $450,000 and an IQ totaling 78."

Ouch.

Despite the lame slogan (which the state dumped) and the unwanted attention it generated, Washington's tourism industry is faring well enough. For example, visitor spending in the state rose 6.5 percent last year to $14.8 billion, marking the fifth straight year of positive growth.

But it could be doing so much better. In fact, the state risks losing its own residents as tourists -- those who, say, live in Seattle but visit the Yakima Valley wine country occasionally -- to other, better-promoted states such as Oregon, which outspends Washington by 50 percent. And Washington has been ignoring an important market in Canada, primarily Vancouver. Visitors from British Columbia to Washington have declined 58 percent since the early 1990s, says David Radcliffe, president of Spokane-based The Radcliffe Co., a hospitality consulting firm helping the state develop new tourism plans.

Yes, that's right: The state is developing new tourism plans. But keep the sarcasm in check. This time, political leaders are revamping how the state decides tourism policy and leverages money to pro- mote itself. The idea is that Washington could attract even more visitors and spending if it successfully develops a broader and more effective promotional campaign. (And forgets "Say WA" ever happened.)

The state has only begun rebuilding its tourism efforts, but business leaders, who have largely been on their own in promoting their individual region's offerings, say they like what they see. "Maybe for the first time in our state's history, I think all of the important collective forces are working together," says Don Welsh, outgoing president and CEO of the Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau, which caused its own mini-stir a few years ago with its new slogan for the city: "Metronatural." Carrie Curtin, manager of Hyatt Vineyards in Zillah (Yakima County), is pleased to see that the state recognizes the need to inform its own residents about what's available to them.

It's a "Cascade Curtain" issue, she says, where eastern Washington is so different from the western side of the mountains that people forget there's "another world that exists that is Washington." Past tourism efforts were unfocused because the industry wasn't taken seriously as an economic-development tool by lawmakers, Radcliffe says. "There hasn't been the kind of leadership on the state level recently that I think we have today." The key difference is that Gov. Chris Gregoire "put it on her agenda," Welsh says. With previous governors, "tourism was an assumed business."

Indeed. Last year, Gregoire and the state Legislature agreed to increase the tourism budget, create a 19-member Tourism Commission and establish a new public-private funding model. Additionally, the state hired a tourism chief. This year, the budget is roughly doubled, to $8 million. Starting in fiscal year 2009, 25 percent of the additional $4 million added to the budget is expected to be matched by contributions from the private sector (bringing the total to $9 million), rising to a 50 percent match by 2010 (for a total of $10 million) and 100 percent match thereafter, potentially creating an annual fund of about $12 million. The idea is to keep the public investment the same each year but add to it by leveraging additional private dollars.