Bangor officials grapple with cruise ship change
Photo/Courtesy Bangor CVB
The American Star visits Bangor in 2007
Representatives of Bangor's business community will meet with the owner of American Cruise Lines in Augusta Monday to see if they can get the cruise ship company to restore trips that will be lost to Portland this summer.
Rod McKay, Bangor's director of Community and Economic Development, says he and a contingent of city officials and business leaders will meet with Charles Robertson, the chairman and CEO of the Connecticut-based cruise ship company.
"Their schedule is in place for 2010 so we would be talking about future years," McKay says.
American Cruise Lines announced in January it would cut back its trips to Bangor from 21 to six beginning this summer and shift more trips to Portland. Cruise line officials indicated then they were losing some business on Bangor cruises because customers were flying into Portland and then busing to Bangor, which is not as convenient.
Kerrie Tripp, executive director of the Bangor Convention & Visitors Bureau, says she and McKay will be accompanied by Jim Ring, the city engineer, Rebecca Hupp, the manager of Bangor International Airport, and Ristine Masters, the airport's marketing director, when they meet with Robertson on Monday.
Tripp says the 100-passenger American Star made Bangor its homeport since 2007 and that ship did 19 trips to and from the city in 2009. As a result, passengers would travel to Bangor, stay in hotels and eat at area restaurants before or after their cruise trips.
Each time, a contingent of city volunteers would bring the passengers root beer and brownies to greet them, since legend has it that Bangor is the birthplace of the brownie, says Tripp.
She says the meeting with Robertson is about learning what Bangor can do better so they can host more cruise ship trips in the future. "There's a very small grouping of ships that we can go after," Tripp says. "We want to do it right."
According to the American Cruise Lines schedule posted on the company's website, Bangor will remain an origin for three of the six cruises on the Grand New England course on Aug. 4, Aug. 25 and Sept. 14, which all end in Providence, R.I. The other three trips begin in Providence and end in Bangor. The American Glory, a 49-passenger ship, will bring passengers to and from Bangor this summer.
McKay says the city values the cruise trips that American Cruise Lines provided and hopes they will be restored in the near future. The city also used $800,000 in federal funds in 2008 to construct a heavy docking facility so it could better accommodate larger cruise ships on the Bangor waterfront, he says.
"We would like to maintain and increase the cruise line schedule in Bangor rather than see it go the other way," McKay says.
Bangor officials could not say how much economic benefit the city's downtown merchants derived from the cruise ship industry, but fewer cruise ship excursions will be felt by many restaurants, retailers and hotels downtown, McKay said.
The Cruise Lines International Association reported in July 2009 that the cruise ship industry spent $29 million directly in Maine in 2008, which represented a 20% increase over 2007. According to studies from CruiseMaine, cruise ship passengers spend $80 to $100 each during their daylong visits in Maine ports, which would mean between $152,000 and $190,000 in local economic impact if Bangor hosted 19 trips with 100 passengers.
Shirar Patterson, the city's business and economic development officer who oversees the Bangor Center Corp., says the cruise trips were a boon to the downtown business community, "particularly when the boats docked in Bangor on Friday nights."
The city offered the cruise ship visitors history tours and highlighted downtown retail shops and restaurants. She said some businesses ended up seeing follow-up sales from cruise line visitors who went home and ordered wares online.
"We're all optimistic and we would like to see American Cruise Lines make Bangor a frequent stop," Patterson says.
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