TOURISM IS BOOMING

All signs point toward a good year for Maine’s number one industry, tourism. This is quite a change from last year’s rainy spring and slow start.

Travel on the Maine Turnpike for Independence Day week was up 6 percent over last year, and the mass exodus last Sunday set a near record of 41,000, with some bumper-to-bumper tie-ups.

Entries to Acadia National Park are up 4 1/2 percent over last year. Hotels and motels report plentiful advance bookings for July and August.

A huge soccer tournament at Falmouth and Bowdoin College in the last weekend of June brought 10,000 players and their families to Maine. Bill Dugal, executive director of the Maine Innkeepers Association reports that many of them stayed on to visit Acadia, Moosehead Lake and other tourist destinations.

August pretty well takes care of itself, says Mr. Dugal, but a June with fine weather and an event like the soccer tournament can get things off to a good start, and “this year we had both.” The tournament will be repeated next year.

Summer rentals on Mount Desert Island are better than ever this year. Carol Schaefer of the Knowles Company in Northeast Harbor says its vacation rentals are up 40 percent from 2006, when they were up from 2005. She attributes the rise partly to the general slump in house sales: People who sometime may buy are renting this summer to check out the area.

Gasoline prices that stabilized a little below $3 a gallon and a scorching early summer in much of the rest of the country helped speed the flow of visitors to the cool breezes of Maine.

The Maine Office of Tourism has a helpful Web site. It now is featuring such attractions as Belfast’s Maine Celtic Celebration July 19-22, the Maine Potato Blossom Festival at Fort Fairfield July 17-22, the 2007 North Atlantic Blues Festival at Rockland July 14 and 15, and the 60th Annual Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland Aug. 1-5.

Tourism Director Pat Eltman, who took over the job this year, expresses optimism for an industry that she says employs 176,000 Mainers and accounts for 18 to 20 percent of the state’s gross product.

With a budget increase to $7.9 million that puts Maine 38th among the 50 states, she is beefing up the Web site and reaching out to celebrate such tourism aids as JetBlue’s New York-to-Portland service.

With even more resources, she would like to expand Maine tourism’s present marketing area from Massachusetts and New York to the Midwest and Canada.

If traffic gets a bit sticky in July and August, never mind. The summer visitors are an important element in the state’s economy.