March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Automobile traffic may slow at Maine tourist haunts after Labor Day, but as Bar Harbor learned over a recent weekend, the early fall season brings high tide for travelers who come by sea.

On a single Sunday recently, 2,000 visitors came ashore from two “megaliners” that docked at the picturesque Mount Desert community. The vessels were the ninth and 10th in a cruise-ship season that is expected to be comparable to last year’s total 27 dockings, but with an important difference:

All but five of 1996’s ships will arrive during September and October.

A series of limited, one-year engagements?

Not likely.

Instead, it is consistent with a pattern that has been emerging in Maine for more than a decade.

During the mid-1980s, Maine tourism officials discovered October wedged into the standings for the top three months in popularity for visitors. Prime time for leaf peeping was contesting with the traditional June-August period as the favorite among visitors.

Three years ago, the head of the University of Maine Department of Resource Economics and Policy observed that at least one quarter of the state’s tourism business was occurring after the traditional summer season had ended. There were a number of benefits to the phenomenon, one of which Bar Harbor merchants learned first hand on megaliner Sunday.

Fall travel extends the tourist season, giving businesspeople the opportunity to have stronger financial years. It also increases the likelihood they can recover from temporary setbacks. The Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce estimates that each traveler leaves $60 in the community before returning to ship. The money from 2,000 tourists on a single day helped take up the slack created by poor mid-summer weather that washed out business.

As Saint John, New Brunswick, learned, cruise ships that dock in Alaska in the summer and in the Caribbean in winter are looking for ports in the fall. Many lines learned they can fill passenger lists with retirees from across the country, including the West and Sun Belt, who have roots in the Northeast. Many of these veteran tourists have more money to spend. Traveling without children, they welcome the opportunity to relax and take bus tours to the interior.

Bar Harbor’s experience is not unusual. Increasingly, high tide for tourism is coming later each year. Colors are hidden beneath the green of summer leaves, but businesspeople are finding the green of cash beneath the red and orange hues of fall.


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