Bangor woos cruise ships back to the city
Photo/Courtesy Bangor CVB
The American Star visits Bangor in 2007
Bangor officials met with American Cruise Lines CEO Charles Robertson in Augusta this spring and requested the company restore cruise ship visits to the Queen City beginning next year.
Apparently, their efforts are paying off.
Tim Beebe, vice president of marketing at American Cruise Lines' corporate office in Guilford, Conn., told Mainebiz this afternoon the company is planning to restore nine departure trips from Bangor in 2011 with the 100-passenger American Spirit.
"We just love the city of Bangor. They have been very good to us and the docking facility is tremendous," Beebe says.
Those planned trips, combined with the three departures on the 49-passenger American Glory the city will renew after this year, will bring the total cruise ship trips to 12 next year. Beebe says the company's decision to add the nine departures was also influenced by the sold-out Maine coastal trips aboard the 110-passenger American Independence, which takes passengers from its homeport in Portland to Rockland. Earlier this year, American Cruise Lines cut its Bangor cruise ship trips from 21 to four.
"This is very good news for the city of Bangor," says Rodney McKay, the city's director of community and economic development. He says that he and Rebecca Hupp, manager of Bangor International Airport, talked with Robertson on July 4 when the American Independence was christened in Rockland and Robertson told them additional cruise ship trips from Bangor were planned next year.
"We understand that they are going to bring back the Spirit next year," McKay says.
Beebe says the cruise ship company could potentially restore more cruise ship visits for Bangor when it makes its final decision on next year's schedule later this year. But he says Bangor officials must find ways to make it less expensive and more convenient for cruise ship passengers to travel to the city to board the vessels. Accessibility continues to be the main obstacle to adding more cruise ship trips.
"We are right now re-examining that issue and trying to find ways to combat that," Beebe says.
Kerrie Tripp, executive director of the Greater Bangor Convention and Visitors Bureau, was one of the city officials who met with Robertson in March along with McKay, Hupp, City Engineer Jim Ring and other business leaders.
"The meeting with Mr. Robertson went very well and we are working to overcome all the issues that were identified at that meeting," Tripp says. She remains hopeful the city will see more cruise ship trips restored and believes the additional departure trip the company brought to Bangor on July 2 that was originally scheduled to depart from Portland may be related to that meeting. The American Glory is scheduled to return to Bangor on Aug. 2 and 23, and Sept. 13.
While the lion's share of Maine's cruise ship business, which the Cruise Lines International Association estimated was $29 million in 2008, comes in and out of the coastal cities of Portland and Bar Harbor, Bangor officials also want their community on the Penobscot River to benefit.
Before American Cruise Lines reduced its Bangor cruise ship trips to four this year, Tripp says the 100-passenger American Star 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. The smaller vessels can navigate river depths and bridges that larger cruise ships can't.
"American Cruise Lines is the only one that fits our model in Bangor," she says.
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