Tourist season in Bar Harbor has resumed with the usual crowded sidewalks and hard-to-find parking spots, but there is one noticeable difference this summer.
The town’s cruise ship visits are a shadow of what they have been the past three years. After seeing more than 100 ship visits between April and early November in each of the past three years — most of them from large ships — Bar Harbor this year at most will get 16 large ship visits, and so far hasn’t had any.
This difference is most noticeable on West Street, where since the 1990s passengers from large cruise ships have come ashore and then been lured into nearby shops and restaurants that cater to tourist clientele.
It is not like June of 2020, when the COVID pandemic made all of downtown Bar Harbor feel like a ghost town, but there is distinctly less foot traffic this year on West Street than on Cottage and Main streets, where a higher concentration of shops and restaurants draw in tourists who arrive via Route 3.
The reason for the difference? Since 2022 local voters twice have supported referendums that effectively ban visits by ships that carry 1,000 or more passengers, which until now have dominated the local cruise traffic. None of those large ships have appeared in Bar Harbor this year, and the shops and restaurants that have been geared toward their passengers are feeling the pinch.
“We’ve seen, currently, about a 40 percent decrease in our lunch business from previous years, which directly correlates with the reduction in cruise ship visits,” said Kevin DesVeaux, co-owner of West Street Cafe. “It’s been a tough season for people who rely on this revenue source to make a living!”
The issue remains a highly divisive one, with a group of local businesses suing Bar Harbor in federal court over the ban on large ships. That challenge is pending in federal appeals court in Boston, which could render a decision “any day now,” according to Eben Salvatore, director of local operations for Bar Harbor Resorts.
The company, which is part of Ocean Properties Ltd., is one of the businesses involved in a dizzying array of lawsuits that have been filed over the new rules, including some by vocal cruise ship opponent Charles Sidman, who frequently has argued that the town is not doing enough to uphold the will of the voters. Some legal claims have been dismissed but others, whether directly related or tangential to the large-ship ban, remain pending in municipal, state and federal appellate venues.
Salvatore said that bookings at the company’s local hotels, which include the West Street properties Harborside Hotel & Marina and West Street Hotel, are consistent with recent years, which have seen a spike in tourist visits since the COVID pandemic. There were no cruise ship visits in 2020 or 2021, when the global cruise industry ground to a halt, but since late 2020 there has been a sustained jump in overland visitation to Mount Desert Island, with visits to Acadia National Park soaring above 4 million in 2021 and remaining close to that level each year since.
Visit totals to Acadia this spring have been on par with recent years at around 100,000 visits in April and 325,000 visits in May. The problem is with non-lodging businesses on West Street, some of which are owned by Ocean Properties, Salvatore said. The hotels may be full, but during the day, when hotel guests tend to head into the national park, there is less activity and foot traffic on West Street because of the lack of cruise ships.
Two sightseeing catamarans that the company owns and has used in past summer to ferry cruise ship passengers to and from shore remain unstaffed this year and tied up at the Harborside marina because there are no large ships to serve, he said. And at the West Street Hotel, there is a vacant street-level retail space where Penelope’s Gifts & Home Decor closed last fall after deciding it likely would not survive the 2025 cruise ship season, according to Salvatore.
“We need a certain scale to maintain ourselves,” Salvatore said, referring to the company’s businesses on West Street that were established to cater to cruise ship traffic. Among the variety of West Street businesses that either are owned by or rent space from Ocean Properties are a kayak tour service, electric bike rentals, bus and boat sightseeing tours, high-end jewelry stores, and multiple retail shops and restaurants.
“Now we’re feeling it,” Salvatore said. “If nothing changes, we’re done.”
David Woodside, the head of Acadia Corporation, said the company has noticed the drop in local cruise ship traffic. It has two stores on West Street — Acadia on West and Best of Bar Harbor — that have slower sales this year, but overall its eight downtown retail locations are “doing OK,” he said.
The changes in the town’s business climate and visitor demographics are a concern, but the town’s tourism industry has weathered most extensive economic downturns in the past, Woodside noted.
“We certainly hope that local restaurants, retail shops, and activities will find ways to successfully adapt to the changes,” he said.
There have been cruise ships in Bar Harbor this year, but only from American Cruise Lines, which runs relatively small ships that carry roughly 100 passengers on a single trip. The eight visits their ships so far have made to Bar Harbor have brought roughly 800 passengers to town — far fewer than the 2,000 passengers that a large ship can bring to town in a single visit.
All told, American Cruise Lines is expected to bring fewer than 4,000 passengers to Bar Harbor this year, which is less than what the huge ship Liberty of the Seas brought to town on each visit in recent years. American Cruise Lines only operates in American waters — unlike the large ships that stop in Bar Harbor on their way to and from Canada — so their tenders can come and go at will from the town pier, rather than having to use the more secure screening processes that Ocean Properties provides.
There could be large ships that visit Bar Harbor this year, as the town is honoring visits that were scheduled before November 2022, when voters first approved the ban on ships that carry 1,000 or more passengers. Cancelling those reservations — which Sidman and his supporters say the town should do — could result in even more litigation, town officials have said, and so are being left on the books.
Two large Norwegian Cruise Line ships — Getaway and Gem — are each still on the 2025 schedule to make eight stops in Bar Harbor between late August and late October. If the Norwegian ships make these scheduled stops, more than 50,000 passengers could come ashore. That’s far less than the 180,000 to 260,000 passengers the town has seen each year since the pandemic.
But some cruise ship companies are changing schedules on their own as they seek to establish long-term relationships with other Maine ports where their ships can stop between Boston and eastern Canada. The Pearl Mist, which has a 210-passenger capacity, had been scheduled to visit Bar Harbor on May 9 but opted to travel instead to Eastport, which has been seeking to expand its cruise ship business.
But despite the lack of large ships so far this year, or what the Norwegian ships might decide, at least one local business owner said he’s been plenty busy this spring.
Michael Rosa, owner of the Thirsty Whale Tavern on Cottage Street, said his restaurant has had its busiest spring and early summer ever. The Whale is open year-round, typically closing for only a few weeks in winter, and so is not reliant on tourists. Though, as is the case with every local retail business, it gets noticeably busier each year between May and October.
Rosa said lunches at the Whale so far this summer have been a little slower than expected, but he has more people on staff this year than he did in 2024. He said daytime foot traffic in downtown in general seems to be down, which may have some benefits, but that he wants Bar Harbor to be “lively and bustling” on the whole.
“As a citizen and consumer, I don’t like seeing shops closed or shuttered properties and I am a bit concerned that we may see more of that,” Rosa said.
The decline in cruise ships also could feasibly result in even more visitors coming by car, he said, which could make parking in town harder to find. And with September and October being historically busy cruise months in the Northeast, he is worried that the absence of ships that time of year could have a greater impact than it has had so far.
“The business and community impacts later this year and over time are, I think, entirely unclear,” Rosa said.
