$3.75 and counting.

That’s a lot of money for a gallon of gas. For a lot of tourist destinations, it’s also a reason to target the home folks. A good reason.

The Maryland Tourism Office is one of a number of state offices that has decided to do something it hasn’t done in years: target the folks up the road in Philadelphia and just a handful of miles south in Washington, DC. It also turned its attention to residents of – Baltimore. As in Baltimore, Maryland.

Using the clever name Pretty.Close, Maryland is hyping everything from the glories of the Preakness to Baltimore’s spectacular harbor, aquarium and Ft. McHenry to, well, Marylanders. The working assumption is that the high price of gas won’t stop people from taking vacations it will just reign in their desire to go long distances.

The folks running Seattle’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau are of the same mind as their Maryland counterparts. David Blandford, the Seattle director for the SCVB has taken the time to check the stats, finding that in previous summers like this one “we see more traffic in our own state.”

This is nothing more than the old adage about making lemonade when you find yourself stuck with a lemon. It’s also great PR sense as tourist bureaus in other locations from Las Vegas to Florida are concluding. In an interesting sign of the times, Palm Beach officials are zeroing in on Atlanta, a figurative hop, skip and a jump up the East Coast.

While the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation has gone as far as offering $50 gift cards to lure visitors from out of state if they book hotels through a local package, Massachusetts set its sights on community newspapers in close-at-hand New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The world of PR even has a new term for these kind of holidays: “staycations.” The term is used increasingly by the media as it begins to zero in on stories about how the price of gas affects daily life in America, from the price of a gallon of milk to exactly what Americans are planning for their summer.

It’s actually a small PR bonanza of a sort for the tourist industry. But there will surely be questions. For starters, do the bleacher seats at Fenway Park in Boston come with sleeping bags and tents or can you just sleep inside the scoreboard? Now there’s a package deal for your average bear New Englander! Not bad PR for the home team either!