States across the U.S. have cut their tourism promotion budgets and, in some cases, switched to more target-market advertising.

Roughly 20 states have cut spending during the past year on advertising and other promotion and support aimed at luring tourists and their vacation dollars, reports the U.S. Travel Association.

That includes states that depend heavily on tourists dollars such as Hawaii, Washington, New York, South Carolina and Arizona.

One state - Washington - shut down its tourism promotion office after lawmakers couldn't come up with the $2 million the office usually spent to attract visitors. (See April 15 Bus & Motorcoach News.)

Hawaii capped its promotion budget at $69 million for each of the next four years, compared with $81 million a year ago.

No surprise, shrinking state and local budgets are the reason for the cuts. They've resulted in less advertising aimed at getting visitors.

Many tourism offices also are laying off employees, inviting fewer travel agents and writers in on "familiarization" trips, and avoiding expensive trade shows, where state travel officials traditionally have courted corporate travel and convention planners.

"Everybody has to figure out how to do more with less," said one state tourism official.

With their budgets reduced, state marketers are learning to do without expensive advertising tools they've traditionally relied on. Most advertising money is being aimed at select, targeted markets.

The Nevada Commission on Tourism, for instance, has stopped advertising in publications such as Conde Nast Traveler and National Geographic. It's putting its dollars into ads in cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle.

Arizona, which has a budget of $8.6 million, down from $19 million in 2009, has been focusing on Chicago and Los Angeles. "We don't have the bandwidth we once had," said a state tourism official.

New York no longer has money for television ads, reports the New York Economic Development Commission, whose tourism marketing budget was cut 39 percent to $7.4 million in the past two years.

Many state tourism officials contend the budget cutting is shortsighted and costs them visitors, which ultimately hurts their states economically.

Like other organizations, state tourism groups are turning to other ways to try to lure customers, that is, visitors.

Some have moved to online options - such as Facebook, Flickr photo contests and other social media channels.

A few states have been able to salvage their tourism budgets.

Texas drafted a budget to slash tourism promotion funding to $5 million for 2012-2013, from $32 million projected for 2011. State lawmakers eventually voted to retain spending levels after an estimated 800 tourism executives from across the state rallied in Austin earlier this year to lobby against the cut.