Pennsylvania has invited tourists to pursue their happiness in the Keystone State since 2016 but now Gov. Josh Shapiro wants people to see it as more of an escape.

On Monday, Shapiro along with Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and other officials unveiled the state’s new tourism slogan: “Pennsylvania. The Great American Getaway.”

The big reveal of the slogan took place at PNC Field, home of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders minor league baseball team. The new brand replaces the 8-year-old “Pennsylvania. Pursue Your Happiness” that was put in place during former Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration.

The Lackawanna County stop was the first of a week-long 50-stop RV tour for the governor — who at times will be joined by first lady Lori Shapiro and their children — to highlight attractions Pennsylvania has to offer from its outdoor adventure experiences, restaurants, and Main Street and local small businesses to its small towns, and many historical attractions.

“Pennsylvania has so much to offer from the Rail Riders games to award-winning restaurants to incredible hikes through our state parks, which by the way are free in Pennsylvania, to some of the most important — let me scratch that — the most important historic sites in the United States of America,” Shapiro said to the crowd gathered on the baseball field. “Here in Pennsylvania, let me tell you something. We have got it all.”

Noting Pennsylvania’s location being within a four-hour drive for 72 million Americans, he said his administration hopes to attract them here to push the spending by tourists above the almost $800 million they spent in 2022, which he said was higher than the year before the pandemic.

“I think we can reach a billion,” Shapiro said. “I think we can tens of thousands of more jobs in tourism and we have to do it and we’ve got to invest and we’ve got to make sure that tourism is at the front of people’s minds when they think about how to grow the economy here.”

Tourism is big business in Pennsylvania, drawing 192.4 million tourists to the state in 2022 and supporting more than 486,000 jobs, according to the latest Economic Impact of Travel and Tourism report. Building up tourism is part of Shapiro’s economic development plan. He is proposing to boost tourism promotion spending by $15 million in his proposed 2024-25 state budget.

“The Shapiro-Davis administration is making tourism a top priority for the first time in more than a decade,” Shapiro said. “In fact, we have literally made it a central part of our economic development strategy, our roadmap that’s going to drive opportunity and prosperity in our commonwealth for generations to come.”

His administration launched a summer marketing campaign – titled “Your Great American Getaway Starts Here” – that runs late May through August in regional markets, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Toronto, and across the state. The launch includes a new ad video narrated by Pennsylvania native and “Broad City” star Abbi Jacobson, who will be the voice of the campaign’s summer ads.

Among the places the website highlights are Hershey, York County, Amish country, and Gettysburg in southcentral Pennsylvania. Interestingly, a mention of the state’s capital city or its historic Capitol is not easily found on the website but is noted in the “Dutch Country Roads” in the regions link.

Pennsylvania has lagged behind New York, Michigan and Illinois when it comes to tourism, he said. Shapiro is determined to change that, particularly with the nation’s 250th anniversary of its birth on the horizon in 2026.

“We want to show the rest of the world that Pennsylvania is indeed the great American getaway,” the governor said. “We are poised to do great things in Pennsylvania and investing in tourism is going to help us accomplish a great deal of that.”

Community and Economic Development Secretary Rick Siger, who along with Lt. Gov. Austin Davis is joining the governor at times on the RV tour, said when his team looked at a rebrand of the tourism promotion they looked at today’s traveler and travel industry. They conducted surveys with focus groups and did other research to come with “a brand that encourages everyone no matter their age or ability to explore every nook and cranny of the commonwealth,” Siger said.

The state’s tourism slogan has changed with almost every administration for at least the past 40-plus years.

Before the “Pursue Your Happiness” slogan was “The State of Independence” which was the winner of a contest sponsored by former Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration that also happened to play off the Philadelphia-born Declaration of Independence. Prior slogans include “Pennsylvania Memories Last a Lifetime,” “America Starts Here,” and “You’ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania.”