Pricey Bar Harbor loses customers to Bangor, County

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If the July Fourth holiday is any clue, Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park could be headed for another disappointing tourism season.

Although it’s too early in the summer for firm numbers, the signs of a depressed season were everywhere over the long holiday weekend.

Only two of the town’s 50 hotels, motels and cottages were booked over the holiday weekend, when during a good year a visitor couldn’t buy a room to rent for the Fourth.

The Island Explorer bus system drove significantly fewer campers back to their campgrounds after Sunday’s fireworks display.

And the Rotary Club sold 200 fewer blueberry pancakes on Saturday, which, without other indicators, could be chalked up to America’s latest low-carb diet craze.

Bar Harbor has long been Maine’s No. 1 tourism destination, drawing one of every four visitors to the state. But according to state reports for 2003, the Ellsworth to Eastport area posted sales gains of just 0.3 percent last year, by far the weakest economic performance in Maine.

Greater Bangor saw a 5.3 percent increase in 2003 sales, and the northern Maine market grew by 3.6 percent.

“You can’t move in this town on the Fourth of July, but you could move yesterday,” Bob Gagnon, an Island Explorer supervisor, said Monday from the Bar Harbor village green.

“At 10 a.m. [Monday] there were three parking spots open,” Gagnon said, pointing over toward the police station lot, “and no people on the street. It was amazing. I’ve never seen that before.”

Lisa Morin of Old Town, who brought her two children to Bar Harbor for the weekend, said Monday she was “floored” when she called a downtown hotel Friday evening and got a room.

“As a native [Mainer] I like that,” Morin said, “but I know it’s not good for the businesses.”

Other people noted sharp declines in business, including the Bay Ferries’ Cat, which makes daily trips from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

“We’re down 30 to 40 percent,” said Kelley Muise, who runs the Bay Ferries reservation desk at the Acadia Information Center in Trenton. “Last year was low. This year is even lower.”

Muise said Yarmouth businesses are suffering right along with Bar Harbor’s because the two tourism communities are so closely linked.

In other areas of Maine, however, business is booming.

A clerk at Days Inn on the Odlin Road in Bangor said the inn has been sold out every night for the past two weeks. She said visitors are still driving to Bar Harbor, Acadia and Mount Desert Island, but they’re spending the night in the city.

“We were on one [Bar Harbor] hotel’s Web site the other day and the cheapest room we could find was $170,” said Linda Kelley.

“Families can’t afford to pay $170 for a bed,” she said. “They’re absolutely still going to Bar Harbor, though. We’re giving them directions to Bar Harbor every day.”

Doran Bouchard, owner of Waters Edge R.V. Resort and Campground in Sinclair, a 40-minute drive north of Caribou, also reports that business is better than ever. His May ledger showed a remarkable 60 percent increase in business, followed by a 20 percent rise in June, he said.

Bouchard agrees with Kelley that Bar Harbor is pricing itself out of an average American family’s budget. He also thinks high gas prices are proving an incentive for Aroostook County residents to vacation closer to home rather than go south to Bar Harbor, Old Orchard Beach or Ogunquit.

“We’re doing very good,” said Bouchard, who ran Ogunquit’s last family-owned restaurant before heading north four years ago. He said the cost of vacationing in places such as Ogunquit and Bar Harbor are too high for many of the families who come to Maine from around New England and other Northeastern states.

“Prices are too high all along the coast,” Bouchard said. “They’re going to have to adjust their prices” to win back customers.

Bar Harbor business owners, meanwhile, cite numerous factors affecting tourism, beginning with a presidential election in November.

A number of people, including Mary Ellis of J.H. Butterfield Co. on Main Street in Bar Harbor, think politics is a gray cloud over Americans in the months leading up to the election.

“It’s an election year and it definitely makes a difference,” Ellis said. “People are scared to spend their money because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Butterfield owner Jack Walls said his food sales are down, but his beer and wine business is up slightly. However, even booze sales slipped over the Fourth.

Muise, who books Cat reservations, said businesses in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, have long seen a drop in American tourism business in a presidential year. She thinks the country’s unease about terrorism, the continuing violence in Iraq and high gas prices have combined to depress sales.

“Americans are not willing to travel far when there’s going to be an election,” she said Monday. “Those who do come stay three or four days instead of two weeks.”

Muise, who returned to Maine from Yarmouth Sunday evening on the Cat, said the passengers seemed keenly aware of the new security signs on the vessel. “They seemed apprehensive,” she said.

The Cat brought about 135 people from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor Sunday evening, she said. The catamaran ferry seats 900.

Pat Pugh, who runs the Acadia Information Center, a private enterprise of Maine and Canadian tourism businesses, looked around the Route 3 center Monday, the last day of a long holiday weekend, and said, “There should be double the people here.

“We’ve had people who are concerned about the economy and about traveling without knowing what’s going to happen with their own security,” she said.

A bulletin board behind Pugh’s counter seemed telling. It listed all of the motels and hotels available on Mount Desert Island. Only two were full.

On a typical July Fourth weekend, which signals the start of the peak tourism season in Maine, visitors would not be able to find accommodations without advance reservations.

Back up north, Brenda Bell is out straight at the Elm Street Diner in Houlton. “I’m very pleased with our numbers,” she said Monday. “With the gas prices and everything else, we’ve felt we are doing quite well.”