🔒With travelers looking for open spaces and outdoor dining, Maine’s summer forecast is — hot

Tony Cameron can remember the moment when things started looking up for Maine’s tourism and hospitality industries, battered by a year of pandemic restrictions and lost business.

It was March 5, when the state announced a timeline easing out-of-state visitor and capacity limits.

“That timeline for lifting restrictions was a huge game-changer,” Cameron, CEO of the Maine Tourism Association, says.

After a year of uncertainty, potential visitors to Maine could finally make plans.

“It is incredibly important,” he says. “It’s one of the things that’s had the biggest impact on how things will go this summer.”

A survey the Maine Tourism Association did a week after the March 5 announcement found the majority of members were optimistic about this year’s tourist season — 69% said Maine tourism will do significantly better this year than last and will start to recover from the pandemic and 67% said their business is in the process of recovering.

About three-quarters said that most potential visitors were asking about Maine’s vaccination, quarantine and testing requirements. The March 5 announcement gave business owners the information to answer.

Cameron says the push of the last couple years to bring new visitors to that state made that even more important. “We want to make sure Maine was on their list,” he says. “So, all that stuff really needed to get answered.”

He and Matt Lewis, CEO of HospitalityMaine, say the industry has seen the results in the past couple of months.

“Every indication we’re getting is that summer is going to be busy for Maine,” Lewis says.

Compared to 2019 …

In 2019, Maine had its best tourism numbers since anyone started keeping track — supporting more than 116,000 workers, generating $9.7 billion in total sales and nearly $650 million in taxes. There was no reason to believe 2020 wasn’t going to be another record year. January 2020 lodging numbers were up 22% from the year before, February was up 20%. Restaurant sales were up an average of 10.5% for the first two months of 2020.

Maine was planning a big 2020, with a variety of events built around the state’s bicentennial, as well as big-ticket draws like the National Governors’ Conference, which was to be held in Portland the first week of August.

The shutdowns and restrictions began just as businesses were getting ready for summer.

From May through August last year, restaurant taxable sales were down 34% and lodging down 78% from the previous year, according to the Maine Office of Tourism. By the end of the year, the industry’s taxable sales were down about 30% from the previous year.

Vacationers make their summer plans and reservations early. Those numbers are an indicator of how strong a season will be.

“One of the things we’ve tried to do is compare this year to 2019,” Cameron says. “It’s still lagging behind, but people are optimistic.” 

In the mid-March survey, 35% of businesses said their reservations for spring and summer were 76% to 100% of their 2019 numbers; 36% were between 26% and 75% compared to 2019.

But things change fast. Cameron says anecdotal evidence is that reservations have picked up significantly.

Google searches, short-term rental inquiries, airline destination searches, travel agent inquiries and more all point to increased interest in Maine this summer, those platforms report. In early April, airline search engine Hopper listed Portland as the top-searched destination in the country and Bangor as the 10th. Airbnb in March said southern Maine was its top search destination.

Maine is also getting a boost from publications like Conde Nast Traveler, which in December listed it as one of the top 21 destinations for 2021, citing the need by many for “solitude and natural wonder. [Maine] is an easy sell, with its rugged coastline and charming port towns,” the publication wrote.

Getting outside

Those searches mirror the calls Experience Maine’s Rachel Sagiroglu is getting.

“I think it’s just going to be a really crazy year,” she says. She is the founder of the two-year-old company, which puts together custom Maine travel packages. “I’ve just been inundated for the past three weeks.” 

As Conde Nast Traveler wrote, and those in Maine’s tourism industry back up, the pandemic has driven new interest in Maine. It has what people are looking for.

The COVID-19 vaccine seems to be the driver for many of the people who contact Sagiroglu.

“People make it a point to say they’re vaccinated, or they’re getting vaccinated,” she says. “It’s made people feel more comfortable.”

Lewis, of HospitalityMaine, says the vaccine has played a big part in the uptick the organization’s lodging customers are seeing. But, he adds, “We were experiencing strong summer interest even before the vaccine. We were getting calls before the vaccine, and they weren’t saying ‘Can I come?’” he says, they were saying they were getting vaccinated and coming.

“The trend is outdoor adventures, big wide open spaces and lots of fresh air,” Sagiroglu says.

That’s coupled with the fact that people who would normally travel out of the country are looking for domestic vacations instead.

“I’m getting a lot of calls from people who would normally go to Cairo or Italy and they’re not doing that this year,” Sagiroglu says.

She’s not only getting calls from traditional visitor areas like Massachusetts and the rest of the Northeast, but places like Texas, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Sagiroglu says Maine’s wide-open spaces and outdoors options are at the forefront of many of her customers’ minds.

“There’s still caution, they still want to be safe,” she says.

She says her clients are still looking for health measures, things like a private lobster boat tour instead of a group one with strangers, or lodging with a separate outside door, rather than a big public lobby.

One thing most ask about, she says, is outdoor dining. She’s happy to talk about how it’s caught on in Maine, both in Portland and other towns and cities.

Cameron says the move to outdoor dining after years of resistance, has been a huge boost to both local commerce and attracting visitors. “Restaurants found a way to do it, and it has paid off,” he says.

Lobsters, lighthouses

Visitors are still mainly focused on coastal areas.

Lewis says the strongest indicators are in the coastal areas, particularly southern Maine, Portland and Bar Harbor.

That’s what Sagiroglu sees, too. “Coastal vacations are still the most popular,” she says. She tries to steer customers who are on an extended visit to see inland areas as well. She recently partnered with Armanda Davis, of Mainely Armanda, who specializes in outdoor adventure vacations and sustainable tourism, and is now a Maine travel advisor with Experience Maine, giving its customers more options.

Cameron says the Maine Tourism Association, particularly at its visitor centers along the Maine Turnpike and the interstates, tries to steer tourists to inland attractions as well. “We expose people to more of what Maine has to offer and highlight those opportunities,” he says.

One of the most attractive things about Maine are the small independent operators and the type of “old school” service they offer, Lewis says. “Visitors feel welcomed, they feel special.”

Ultimately, the key to a good season is the same thing that got the state’s tourism industry through the past year.

While some businesses didn’t make it through the year, and some still don’t know if they will or not, the tourism industry as a whole showed how resilient and adaptable it is, Cameron says.

“2020 was an unreal situation,” he says. “I hope we never have to do that again. But the flip side was it was incredible to see how quickly businesses adapted, and they did an incredible job. They put protections and protocols in place, and still were able to take care of guests. The last thing people want to do when they come to Maine is worry about a pandemic. They want to relax and have fun.”

He adds, “That’s what Maine does best. That’s why people come here.”