🔒With approach of summer and centennial, Acadia braces itself

Visitation at Acadia National Park this past January and February shot up by 45% over the same time period in 2015 — from 23,000 to 34,000 — a huge increase for the winter months.

Was it the mild winter? Low gas prices? Or the growing buzz about the National Park Service's centennial anniversary?

While there isn't a clear answer, inns and bed-and-breakfast establishments are reporting anecdotally an increase in advance bookings — a sign the summer could see another increase in visitors. To handle the expected crowds, the operator of a free bus service within the park is scouring the nation recruiting drivers and finding extra buses.

At the same time, the Acadia Centennial Task Force — a partnership of Acadia National Park, Friends of Acadia, and businesses and nonprofits in the communities surrounding the park — is aggressively promoting the centennial.

Two local papers, the Mount Desert Islander and the Ellsworth American, will feature an advertising insert in May. The Islander is featuring a weekly story accompanied by the centennial logo. Down East magazine is producing a dedicated issue in June and has donated three-full page ads to promote the anniversary. The Boston Globe has committed to coverage.

“And we're engaged in a pretty aggressive program of social media, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,” says Jack Russell, co-chair of the Acadia Centennial Task Force.

Visitation already on the rise

In 2015, Acadia had 2.81 million visitors, an 8% jump over 2014, when 2.56 million visitors showed up. Attendance in the past two years is among the park's best ever, says Acadia's management assistant, John Kelly.

Acadia officials are reluctant to make attendance projections.

“Let's say we did projections, and a bike shop buys more bikes to accommodate our prediction — and we're wrong,” says Kelly. “They've gone out and invested in response to us. So we don't make projections for that reason. We also don't do it because we'd be better off predicting the weather than visitation.”

But the lodging industry is clearly preparing for an increase in visitors.

“What I'm hearing among bed-and-breakfast owners, and other people I talk with, is that reservations are up already,” says Martha Searchfield, interim director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce. Searchfield, who owns Canterbury Cottage, a bed-and-breakfast in Bar Harbor, says she's seen a small increase in people calling for reservations.

“I think it's going to be an incredibly busy summer,” Searchfield says, adding: “That's not fact-based. It's anecdotal. But there's a sense of anticipation in the air.”

At the Saltair Inn, a year-round, eight-room bed-and-breakfast owned by Kristi and Matt Losquadro, advance reservations are up 30% compared to this time last year.

“I don't know what to attribute that to, if it's the centennial, or the fact that we just redid our website, or the mild winter,” Matt Losquadro says. “But, yes, reservations are coming earlier. Our summer is already a third booked, maybe close to half. And our spring has been much better than last year. We're getting three or four, sometimes five or six reservations a day.”

Rebecca Richardson, owner of a rental agency, Bar Harbor & Acadia Cottage Rentals, handles everything from small homes with peak-season weekly rents of $900 to a waterfront estate that goes for $14,000 a week. She's already seeing an increase in bookings.

“We're already up 10%, year-to-date, over 2015's bookings. So I'm thinking it's going to be a good season — better than last season by maybe 5% to 10%,” Richardson says.

Witham Family Partnership, one of the two largest lodging owners in Bar Harbor, has 13 lodging properties and 900 guest rooms, much of it on Mount Desert Island. Holdings include the Bar Harbor Inn, Acadia Inn, the Atlantic Oceanside, Villager Motel, Quality Inn, Best Western Acadia Park Inn, Hampton Inn and the Bar Harbor Motel, among others.

Witham is seeing a 14% increase in advance bookings, said Fred Link, general manager of the Bar Harbor Inn.

“Definitely, the centennial is creating a huge buzz for visiting the park, Bar Harbor, MDI, and Ellsworth this year,” says Link. “We're anticipating a very busy season.”

Ocean Properties, Bar Harbor's other major lodging owner, has the Bar Harbor Regency, Harborside Hotel, West Street Hotel and Days Inn — a total of 631 guest rooms.

“It's that time of year when you can tell what kind of season you're going to have,” says Eben Salvatore, the chain's local operations manager. “And we're ahead of last year,” by an estimated 8% to 10%.

He cites the Acadia's trending numbers, the centennial and the weather.

“Each year, we have a 5% swing, give or take, with the weather,” he says. “That's usually the biggest factor in the kind of season we have.”

Be welcoming, but be prepared

Whatever the source, these upticks might be just a glimpse of what's to come this summer. The Acadia Centennial Task Force has been working for the past three years to craft a gala year and a marketing campaign that is now coming into full swing.

The park had already benefited from Ken Burns' 2009 documentary, “The National Parks: America's Best Idea,” free publicity from President Barack Obama's family visit in 2010; and citations like “America's Favorite Place” by ABC's “Good Morning America.”

Acadia is the ninth most-visited national park, yet one of the smallest by area.

To that end, the task force and its partners seek a balance between promoting the centennial and finding ways to mitigate congestion.

Congestion is a major issue and the subject of a long-range transportation plan, due out in 2018 at the earliest. Last summer, snarls of cars, RVs and tour buses atop Cadillac Mountain was so bad at times — with drivers unable to find parking or even to exit the summit — that rangers closed the access road until conditions improved.

The park hopes to avoid similar problems this year through social media and the centennial website (acadiacentennial2016.org). The hope is to make visitors aware of options both in the park and in surrounding communities that could reduce peak crowding at Acadia's most popular spots. While still in development, the thought is to develop a “quality visits” section on the centennial website that might feature the purpose and routes of the fare-free bus system called the Island Explorer, the less-used “village connector” trails, community amenities, and boat tour operations that offer sea views of the park.

In addition, the working group plans to discuss congestion challenges directly with visitors, through outlets such as newspaper articles, social media messaging, and the park's roving educators called Ridge Runners.

“We are eager to do grassroots communication out to visitors, both from here and beyond, encouraging them to appreciate the things they can do in the community that this year will be strongly related to the park,” says the centennial task force's Russell. “I think it's useful to suggest to people, particularly people who have been here more than once, that there are many hours when you can enjoy Ocean Drive and the top of Cadillac with no risk of choke-point crowds. Our job is to do what we can with credible and careful and respectful communication to visitors.”

Workforce crunch

Since its establishment in 1999, the Island Explorer has proven a key component in visitor management, relieving a fair amount of traffic by carrying almost 5.5 million passengers to date and eliminating more than 2 million private vehicle trips, according to estimates.

Downeast Transportation, which runs the Explorer, has had a warm-up to the centennial, thanks to jumps in ridership in the past two years. In 2014, ridership increased 12% over 2013. Ridership went up another 6% in 2015, its busiest year to date.

Downeast Transportation continues to prepare for greater ridership.

“We're trying to recruit more drivers and find a couple of extra buses because, during peak season, everything that we can put on the road, is on the road. And last year, that wasn't quite enough,” says General Manager Paul Murphy. “Given that we saw it prior to the centennial year, that might be a trend that exists beyond the centennial. So we're looking at both short- and long-term.”

To recruit up to 90 seasonal drivers, Murphy is calling school systems, southern resorts and even national parks that tend to attract visitors in the winter. He has even advertised in publications geared toward RV vacationers and others who follow the sun year-round.

“It's difficult to attract drivers here because our wage is barely competitive,” Murphy says. “The starting wage is $13.50 an hour this season. And housing costs are very high here in the summer. So if you're trying to attract people who don't live here, it's difficult for us to make the equation affordable for them.”

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