🔒Bar Harbor wants to balance small-town life and big-time tourism

The town of Bar Harbor is looking to balance its residential small-town lifestyle with the robust tourism economy that results from being a gateway community to Acadia National Park and a tourist destination in its own right.

The town hired Arlington, Va., economic development consultant J.E. Austin Associates to help evaluate the challenges of managing tourists and to develop possible solutions.

Top issues identified in a resident survey conducted last November included what some said were the town’s reactive, rather than proactive, and sometimes divisive strategies for managing tourism growth. Residents also expressed concern that, while tourism contributes to the local economy, it’s making Bar Harbor less livable.

Additional themes included traffic and parking overwhelmed by tourism levels, creating gridlock, safety concerns and making it hard for residents to access the town, according to a presentation by Michele McKenzie of J.E. Austin to the task force last week and in February. The survey drew 374 responses, 75% of them submitted by year-round residents.

Conflicting views

Bar Harbor’s year-round population was 5,200 as of the 2023 census. The town also hosts an influx of tourists headed to Acadia National Park. In 2025, Acadia logged over 4 million visits (the tally reflects visits, not visitors. One individual might enter the park multiple times). Many of the park's visitors use Bar Harbor amenities.

The goal of the town's tourism-management task force is to achieve a balance between economic, environmental and social well-being while continuing to build and expand the thriving tourism industry.

Many residents said they perceive Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island to be over-capacity and want visitor numbers held steady or reduced. But others resisted hard limits and preferred to let the tourism market set its own level, even as they acknowledged crowding

Housing costs were a widely shared concern. Many called for tighter limits on short-term rentals and new lodging, although a smaller group worried primarily about overregulation and property rights.

'Destination tax'

Overall, tourism was recognized as central to the town’s economy, but many want to diversify and strengthen a year-round economy with businesses and jobs that serve locals.

Residents also said they shoulder an unfair property tax burden for tourism-related costs and want visitors and tourism businesses to pay more.

Destination taxes are a common mechanism used elsewhere, according to the report, which suggests that the town consider alternative governance and funding models.

“At the same time, residents recognize that because of tourism, they enjoy a disproportionate level of services and amenities for a ‘town this size’ and they recognize that Acadia National Park is a treasure for all Americans,” the report says.

Initiatives in place

The town and Acadia National Park have implemented a number of initiatives in recent years to address congestion. That includes a reservation system for vehicles accessing Cadillac Mountain, the Island Explorer free transit around Mount Desert Island and in the park in the high season and a new tourist center that opened on the mainland last year to serve as a transit hub/provide free parking to visitors and workers.

The town instituted restrictions as to where large cruise ships can moor and the number of cruise passengers who can disembark in Bar Harbor on a single day, installed parking meters and imposed a moratorium on the development of new lodging, including short-term rentals.

Strategies identified in the report include addressing how infrastructure and services for visitors are funded and guarding against over-commercialization of residential real estate. Strategies to reduce vehicle numbers could include increasing hourly parking rates at meters for non-residents, encouraging use of gateway center parking and of the Island Explorer for day trip visitors, introducing a trolley/tram system and improving infrastructure for biking and walking in the downtown area.

“People who live in Bar Harbor choose to live here,” one resident wrote in an email to the task force in December. “That choice comes with residents understanding and accepting the pros and cons of living in a seasonal tourist town in a national park. However, it is our home, our town, our friends, our nonprofits, schools, etc. We need access to services.”