Maine tourism in 2016 may top last year's visitors
File Photo / Laurie Schreiber
Fred Link, general manager of the Bar Harbor Inn, says the inn saw a significant increase in room reservations this year, helped in part by the centennial of the National Park Service.
Tourists to the state in 2016 could surpass last year’s $5.65 billion in tourism spending, which tourism officials credit partly to marketing outreach.
Carolann Ouellette, the outgoing state director of the Maine Office of Tourism, told Maine Public the department has a new emphasis on attracting visitors via targeted social media campaigns and other marketing initiatives.
“We had core markets that had been New England and Eastern Canada, so we expanded into the mid-Atlantic, which has been very successful,” Ouellette said.
Among the conclusions of the Maine Office of Tourism’s tracking report for summer 2016 from May through August:
• Nationwide, overnight travel rose compared with prior summer seasons in the stated reasons of leisure, visiting friends and relatives and business travel. The continual decline in the relative cost of travel nationwide helped, along with lower gas prices.
• Targeting markets farther away from Maine is helping draw more visitors from the mid-Atlantic states.
• The 2016 summer season experienced an increase in the proportion of first-time overnight visitors, notably those from the mid-Atlantic region.
Acadia visits surge
Acadia National Park appears to have benefited from the National Park Centennial.
Its latest visitor numbers show a 19.8% increase over the same month last year, the Mount Desert Islander reported.
The park is on track to top 3.3 million visitors in 2016, besting another record-setter in 2015 with 2.81 million visitors.
Ridership on the Island Explorer bus system is also up 9% over 2015, the newspaper said.
"It's been an outstanding season," Fred Link, general manager at the Bar Harbor Inn, told Mainebiz in October.
Related to the surge in numbers, the National Park Service on Nov. 30 wrapped up a public comment period on preliminary concepts for the Acadia National Park Transportation Plan that is to be finalized by the fall of 2018.
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